OF RELIGIONS 



GE R.DODSON 




Class. 
Book- 



GopyrightW.. 



an 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



THE 
SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 



THE BEACON PRESS PUBLICATIONS 
IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

THE NEW BEACON COURSE 
OF GRADED LESSONS 

William I. Lawrancc 
Florence Buck 

Editors. 



The 
Sympathy of Rehgions 



BY 

GEORGE R DODSON, Ph. D. 



6 6sd9 <pw<: i(Tr\v , , , dLyaTzri iffriv^ 

New Testament, I John, 1:5; 4: 8 

rb dh delou KaXow ao<p6v dyadov 
Koi Trdv 3 Ti roiouTov^ 

Plato, Phadrus, 346 E. 



THE BEACON PRESS 

25 BEACON STREET 

BOSTON, MASS. 



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Copyright, 1917, by 
THE BEACON PRESS, Inc. 



All rights reserved 



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APR 18 1917 

VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY 
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DGIA46202 2 



TO 
MY WIFE 



EDITOES' PREFACE 

The purpose of this book is to show the sub- 
stantial unity of human faiths. Back of all re- 
ligions is religion. Its various forms are but lo- 
cal, racial and temporal mouldings of the one 
great impulse to live nobly, to love others and to 
adore the highest we know. This sympathetic 
approach to the study of world-faiths obviates 
spiritual conceit and makes impossible narrow- 
ing and dishonoring views of God. Moreover, 
by thus setting Christianity among the great 
religions we are able to grasp its meaning and 
so at once rationalize and strengthen our loyalty 
to our inherited faith. 

In this book no effort is made to summarize 
or even to name the many religions by which 
men have found strength to live and courage to 
die. Still less has there been an attempt to 
point out evils in practice or crudities of doc- 
trine, so easily discovered in all faiths. Eather 
has the author chosen to take the most highly 
developed forms of religion and to take each 
of them in its best estate, the more clearly to 
show how wonderfully mankind has been led 
into high thinking and holy living by the One 
Spirit that broods over all. 



EDITOES' PREFACE 

Such a work has fitting place in the Beacon 
Course in Religious Education. Beginning 
with the earliest years, the books in this course 
abound in stories of faith, devotion and service, 
culled from the scriptures and folk-lore of many 
peoples. The editors have earnestly desired 
that children growing into maturity while using 
this series shall know that God has not left 
himself without witness in any land or any age, 
and that the universality of spiritual aspira- 
tion and of the moral imperative constitutes 
their sanction and authority. 

This work, like all those prepared for the 
later years of the Beacon Course, avoids the 
text-book form. It is a book to be read. Yet 
the great ideas with which the author deals re- 
quire close and sustained attention. It will, 
therefore, yield the best results when used in 
classes or other groups under thoughtful leader- 
ship. Prepared for pupils twenty years of age, 
it may be used profitably by any who are willing 
to put forth that effort which all books require 
that provide a challenge for thoughtful reflec- 
tion. 

The Editors 



CONTENTS 



PAGI 

FoBEWORD -^ The Pubpose and Plan of this Book . . 5 



PART I 
Religion at Its Best 

Chapter I An Introduction to Religion at Its Best 17 

II Data and Methods 28 

III Pure Religion 38 

IV Spiritual Biology 61 

PART II 
Chbistianity at Its Best 

Chapter V As Love to God .63 

VI As Love to Man . 77 

VII Living Epistles 90 

PART III 
The Religion of Greece 

Chapter VIII The Religion of Greece 105 

IX As Love of the Divine 119 

The Symposium - . . 121 

The Thesetetus 127 

The Republic 129 

X As Love of the Divine (Continued) . 133 

The Republic 133 

The Phaedo and the Phsedrus . . 137 

XI Plato's Theism 152 

XII The Greek Conception of the Good Life 166 

Ethical Theory of the Republic . 167 
The Philebus and "The Loveliest 

of Lives" 174 



CONTENTS 



PART IV 
The Religions of India page 

Chapter XIII Approach to the Spiritual Life of India 185 
XIV Fundamental Ideas of the Religions 

and Philosophies of India . . 190 
XV The Religion of the Veda and the Sys- 
tem of the Vedanta .... 199 
XVI The Way of Salvation Proclaimed by 

Gautama, the Buddha . . ■. .218 
XVII Transmigration and Karma . . . 233 
XVIII Buddhism as a Living Force . . . 253 
XIX Hinduism at Its Best: The Bhagavata 

Religion 273 

XX Hinduism at Its Best: Kabir . . .286 
XXI Hinduism at Its Best: Rabindranath 

Tagore 293 

XXII India's Contribution to the Spiritual 

Life of Humanity 304 

PART V 
The Beginnings of Religion Interpreted in the 
Light of Its Highest Development 
Chapter XXIII The Childhood of Religion . . . .319 



FOEEWORD 

THE PURPOSE AND PLAN OF THIS BOOK 

If the reader of this book is not to be disap- 
pointed but is to derive pleasure and profit from 
its pages, it is necessary that he should un- 
derstand its unique purpose and not approach it 
expecting to find in it what the writer has not 
intended to present. There are books of reli- 
gion and books about religion, and there are still 
greater books both of and about religion, writ- 
ten by men who do not believe that to under- 
stand feeling one must be devoid of it but who 
dare to philosophize with the whole man in the 
conviction that it is possible to live and at the 
same time to understand life. An introduction 
to religion, or a comparative study of some of 
the great historic religions, ought to be an inter- 
pretation, an expression of the highest experi- 
ences suffused with intelligence, of the religious 
life understood. 

It is therefore not the purpose of this book to 
present the facts about any of the religions 
treated. Most of them can be found in any 
good encyclopaedia. There are also many man- 
uals and special treatises available, two of 



6 FOEEWOED 

which are particularly recommended, viz., 
'^ History of Religions," by George F. Moore 
(Scribner's, 1914), and C. H. Toy's '' Introduc- 
tion to the History of Eeligions '' (Ginn & Co., 
1913). Indeed, a knowledge of the main facts 
is presupposed. It has been assumed that the 
reader has the intelligence, the education and 
the religious training of well endowed and fa- 
vorably situated American young people of 
nineteen or twenty years of age. In the schools 
and Sunday schools such young men and women 
have learned a good deal about the Bible and 
the history of Israel, about Judaism and Chris- 
tianity, and they may be presumed to know 
something about Greece and to be acquainted 
with the story of Socrates and the Buddha. 
What this book is concerned with is, not the 
external and historic facts alone, but rather with 
their significance, their true interpretation. 
Eeligion is a matter of spiritual life ; to have an 
intelligent view of it one must share it, reflect 
upon it, gain an insight into it, understand it 
with the heart, and see into the spiritual interi- 
ors of lives that it inspires. All facts concerning 
religion are important, but it is possible to know 
about them all that a divinity faculty knows and 
yet remain a stranger to the religious life. 

What is possible is to try to use the scrupu- 
lous care of science in all statements as to his- 
toric or present facts, and then to think reli- 
giously about them. Plato has shown that it 



FOEEWOED 7 

is not impracticable to unite the scientific with 
the religious spirit. No one has ever loved 
truth, beauty and the good more ardently or 
thought more clearly about them. Despite the 
limitations of his age, what he wrote is still 
fertilizing the minds and moving the hearts of 
men. He felt deeply the values he tried to un- 
derstand, and in this respect he is the great 
model for all time. For religion is concerned 
with values which cannot be known by the 
senses and the intellect alone or through the 
report of others. He who does not feel the re- 
ligious hopes, fears, loves and longings is at 
best a second-hand thinker who never really 
knows his data. What has been attempted in 
this book is to give an inside view of the reli- 
gions in question, to help to an appreciation of 
the spiritual attitude, the feelings, the inner 
life, the soul, of Christianity, of classic Greece, 
and of India. With good will on the part of the 
reader, and with some imagination and sym- 
pathy, it may be possible for us to enter to- 
gether into the hope and faith and longings, 
the worship, the love and the aspiring life of 
other races and ages, of the great seers and the 
sages, the ^^ prophets and holy ones, sons of 
the Lord.'' 

The study has been limited to six religions, 
for the reason that experience has shown the 
futility of attempting too much in a small space. 
A superficial treatment of many subjects pro- 



8 FOEEWOED 

duces only slight impressions which soon fade 
from the mind. The religions treated here have 
been selected for special reasons. Judaism, 
Christianity, and Greek religion are not foreign 
to us. Upon them our spiritual life has been 
nourished, and by the third far more than is 
generally realized. The first two are treated 
together, since they are parts of one stream of 
development, and less space is given to them 
for the reason that they are already familiar. 
Each has been taken at its best, since the best of 
each alone possesses more than an academic 
interest, and an effort has been made to distin- 
guish in each that which is essential and vital 
from the elements that are local, accidental and 
accessory. The three religions of India are 
closely related. They have been chosen, rather 
than some other great expressions of humanity's 
spiritual life, because of the interest in them 
which is at present so widely felt, and also be- 
cause of their intrinsic worth. There is, too, 
the further purpose of correcting extravagant 
expectations, of overcoming injurious miscon- 
ceptions, and developing a critical spirit which 
will be appreciative of the best that India offers 
us, but that will also reject that which would 
injure rather than help our spiritual life. 

To teachers who may undertake to use this 
book in the instruction of young people, the 
writer offers the following suggestions. Ee- 
member that in teaching religion the first essen- 



FOEEWOED 9 

tial is to be sure that you have it. If you see 
beautiful ideals, if you love them, if you believe 
in life and man and God, your spirit will propa- 
gate itself by contagion. Your enthusiasms 
will be caught by your pupils. In talking to 
them about *^the sympathy of religions," you 
will understand that what you have to do is, not 
to present a number of facts for the memory to 
retain, but to help them to an appreciation of 
the inner spiritual life of other men and other 
times, so that they share the enthusiasms of old 
Greece and its passion for perfection, and know 
how it feels to be a Vedantist or Buddhist. 

You are therefore urged to read this book 
from beginning to end before you attempt to 
use it. You will find the exposition cumulative, 
the same principles being illustrated in many 
ways. It is hoped that you will discover for 
yourself one of the chief delights of such studies, 
namely, that of perceiving identity in what 
seems at first a bewildering variety of differ- 
ences. Then, having the great idea clearly in 
your mind and presumably filled with enthusi- 
asm about it, you have only to try to understand 
your pupils, to find out through questions where 
they are ; nothing more will be needed to make 
you a good teacher except tact and good sense, 
for which you must rely upon yourself. No one 
can teach anybody else precisely how to teach. 
Psychology and pedagogy furnish some general 
principles, but their application is an art. One 



10 FOEEWOED 

of the first things a good teacher has to learn is 
that each human being is unique and that no 
two individualities are alike, so that a method 
of approach which is successful in one case will 
necessarily be more or less of a failure with all 
others. 

It was the original intention to include many 
passages from the great religious literatures as 
illustrations of the ideas and spirit of the text. 
This has been found to be impracticable, first be- 
cause the volume would thereby have become 
too large, and again because such fragmentary 
selections usually fail to convey the true and 
intended impression. It is better, a hundred 
times better, for a youth to read the Apology 
of Socrates, the Crito and the Phcedo, than to 
hear much talk about them with short quota- 
tions from them. You are strongly recom- 
mended to ask your pupils to read these three 
dialogues of Plato, while you are dealing with 
Judaism and Christianity. Then, when you 
come to the religion of Greece, you will find you 
have much common ground and that your task 
will be easy. Tell the young people that they 
will find the Apology and Crito easy, but that in 
the Phcedo, along with some of the most inter- 
esting things they have ever read, they will 
meet with arguments about the soul and its im- 
mortality that they will not understand. Say to 
them also that this does not matter, that they 
are to pass lightly over these places, that the 



FOEEWOED 11 

dialogue is easy when they leave the difficulties 
out. If they read the whole to the end, they 
will get an impression of a life which has fasci- 
nated and inspired the best minds for centuries, 
and which no retelling of the story can convey. 
If any of the class becomes deeply interested 
and wishes to know more of Plato, suggest the 
reading of the Protagoras^ the Gorgias, and the 
Republic. If you should lead him to become a 
lover and life-long companion of Plato, you will 
have rendered him perhaps the greatest of all 
services. The influence of this master of the 
spiritual life is illustrated in the following sen- 
tences from the letter of a friend : ^ ^ I write 
to tell you a story which may interest you. Not 
long ago a judge was doubtful with respect to 
his public duty. His health had become im- 
paired and he was inclined to retain the emolu- 
ments of his office without rendering any serv- 
ice. I happened to have in my pocket Plato's 
Crito, and, when he stated his difficulty, read 
him certain passages. He immediately re- 
solved to do his duty.'' 

In dealing with India, you have at your serv- 
ice the delightful book on Buddhism by Fielding 
Hall, which is mentioned and quoted from in 
the text; there are also Warren's ^^ Buddhism 
in Translations," and, for the quite mature 
minds, Nukariya's '^ Eeligion of the Samurai." 
No reading is suggested in connection with the 
Vedanta. That system of thought is so strange 



12 FOREWOED 

and profound that it cannot be made easy, but 
the chapter which deals with it has been written 
with the purpose of setting forth its foundations 
and larger outlines and its relation to our life. 
In the exposition of Hinduism at its best, we 
fortunately have to help us one of its repre- 
sentatives who is also among the foremost liter- 
ary men of the modern world. Some selections 
from Tagore's prose and poetry have been 
given, and these may be supplemented by as 
many others as there is time for. Kabir^s 
poetry has also been brought to us and in a 
translation by Tagore himself. 

One further suggestion. You will observe 
that although the writer has striven for clear- 
ness, concreteness and simplicity, he has not 
tried to avoid the language of culture and has 
not hesitated even to use big words when they 
seem necessary. He has done this deliberately, 
having learned by experience that it is better 
for young people, and perhaps for us all, to read 
up rather than down, and that there is more 
danger of underestimating the intelligence and 
spiritual capacity of young people than of 
^^ talking over their heads.'' Do not fear, then, 
to place this book in their hands. There are 
sentences, and here and there paragraphs, that 
some of them may not at first reading under- 
stand. The discussions in the class should 
make these parts clear. But if some difficulties 
remain, they will be found to be comparatively 



FOEEWORD 13 

unimportant so far as the main purpose is con- 
cerned. For if you can bring your young peo- 
ple into the presence of the best and keep them 
there, you will find that their spiritual natures 
are being quickened. They have an affinity for 
the highest, and you will realize anew that the 
words of the life-giving lives are spirit and life, 
and that the essence of what you most wanted 
to teach has passed into their minds. 



PAET I 
RELIGION AT ITS BEST 




THE 
SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

CHAPTER I 

AN" INTKODUCTION TO BELIGIOl^T AT ITS BEST 

]N introduction to the study of religion 
should be an introduction to religion 
at its best. To begin at the beginning 
of the development of religion is, of 
course, the logical way, but experience in teach- 
ing young people proves that it is practically un- 
wise. The beginnings of many fine things are 
unattractive, and sometimes even repulsive and 
depressing, and those who study them before 
becoming acquainted with the purified product 
of later development receive an impression that 
is not easily overcome, and that is henceforth 
an obstacle in the way of the sympathy which is 
necessary to comprehension of the subject. 

This fact is well illustrated by a great misad- 
venture in the history of modern thought. Her- 
bert Spencer planned his Synthetic Philosophy 
logically and, with certain exceptions, developed 
it as planned. The mistake was extremely seri- 

17 



18 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

ous. For, in the first part of the first volume, 
he stated his negative conclusions at such length, 
and in his Sociology he dwelt so long on his 
famous Ghost-Theory and the ideas, emotions 
and religious rites of primitive man, that his 
readers inevitably either lose sympathy with the 
subject or confidence in him. He seems to show 
that religion is nothing but superstition in the 
beginning and agnosticism in the end. Al- 
though he does ultimately set forth some posi- 
tive and inspiring conceptions concerning that 
great, abiding interest of the human race, 
namely, religion, he has nevertheless produced 
an impression which is almost universal and 
which persists in spite of his later utterances, 
that his attitude is negative and destructive. In 
the final chapter of his * ' Ecclesiastical Institu- 
tions ^' and in his controversy with Frederic 
Harrison, he declares that there is one absolute 
certainty — that we are * ^ ever in the presence 
of an Infinite and Eternal Energy from which 
all things proceed ''; that although our thought 
can not comprehend this Energy we may rest 
^ ' in the conviction that the choice is not between 
personality and something lower than person- 
ality, but between personality and something 
higher ' ' ; that ^ ' our lives, alike physical and 
mental, in common with all the activities, or- 
ganic and inorganic, amid which we live, are but 
the workings of this Power, '^ which is ^^ the All- 
Being '^; that whatever God is we are, or, in 



EELIGION AT ITS BEST 19 

Spencerian phrase, ' ' the power which manifests 
itself in consciousness is but a differently condi- 
tioned form of the power which manifests itself 
beyond consciousness.'' He also says that the 
conception toward which thought tends is 
** much less that of a universe of dead matter 
than that of a Universe everywhere alive/' and 
that ^^ this necessity we are under to think of the 
external energy in terms of the internal energy 
gives rather a spiritualistic than a materialistic 
aspect to the universe." 

In his reply to the criticisms of the brilliant 
positivist, Mr. Spencer points out these passages 
and insists that he has been treated unfairly be- 
cause they have not been given due weight. But 
it was too late. The first part of '' First Prin- 
ciples " did leave on most readers the impres- 
sion that religion had been reduced to a ^^ belief 
in a sort of a something, about which we can 
know nothing," that the idea of God had been 
** defecated to a pure transparency," and that 
theology had ended in the Everlasting No. This 
negative impression was reinforced by the hun- 
dreds of pages in which Mr. Spencer deals with 
the ghost theory of savages and the many re- 
pulsive superstitions of primitive man. The 
reader finds it hard to believe that there is any- 
thing of truth and value in a conception which 
results from successive modifications of a con- 
ception which seems utterly untrue. 

The lesson of this instructive mistake should 



20 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

be taken to heart by the religious teachers of the 
present age. It is in every way best that the 
instructors of the young and those who write for 
the increasing number of people who have an 
intelligent interest in the researches of scholars 
should first present the religious idea in the 
highest form it has yet reached. When its true 
nature and its value for the rest of life are ap- 
preciated, its early stages of development can be 
more profitably studied. For ^4t is no dispar- 
agement to the higher forms of thought that they 
have grown from feeble beginnings, and it does 
not detract from the historical value of primi- 
tive life that we decline to credit it with depth 
and refinement. Every phase and every sta- 
dium of human experience has its value, and the 
higher stages must be estimated by what they 
are in themselves. '^ 

It is true that the religious life of the present 
cannot be understood except in the light of its 
history. In civilization there are many sur- 
vivals from a savage and barbarous past. It is 
therefore necessary to know something of ani- 
mism, fetichism, of magic and tabo6, of the su- 
perstitious beliefs and fears in which our ances- 
tors lingered so long. But a study of these 
early stages of development is for the mature. 
To begin with these phenomena is to confuse the 
mind, which cannot easily detect the germ of 
truth unless it knows beforehand that it is there. 
There is something in Christianity which in- 



RELIGION AT ITS BEST 21 

spires and sustains nobility of life, but the best 
approach to it is not through a study of the Book 
of Judges or of the witchcraft delusion. 

Since the way of learning is not always the 
way of logic, since it is not necessary to follow 
all the wanderings of our ancestors in order to 
come into possession of the science and the re- 
ligious insight the world has reached, and since 
the supreme object of a study of the spiritual 
history of humanity is to have a religious life 
and then to understand it, an Introduction to the 
History of Eeligion, or what was once called 
Comparative Religion, should begin with a pre- 
sentation of religion at its best, a statement of 
the highest thought and purest insight yet 
reached. It is happily possible to do this. 
Within a generation scholars have come into 
such agreement in regard to the main line of re- 
ligious development that a statement of its 
primitive phase, its course and its goal, can now 
be made which is much more than the theory of 
a few men, which is, in fact, an established result 
that research is constantly confirming and mak- 
ing more precise and clear. 

The greatest truths are like the kingdom of 
heaven in that they come without observation. 
In the last century and a quarter travellers have 
visited savage tribes, anthropologists have 
studied them, comparative mythologists have 
collected their myths and legends, the literature 
and religions of India have been investigated, 



22 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

and interesting theories concerning the history 
of religion have had their rise and fall. Much 
remains obscure, but certain facts of immense 
significance have become so clear that there is 
very little disagreement among scholars in re- 
gard to them. Numerous statements are ap- 
pearing which indicate the convergence of 
thought in this field. Perhaps the most concise 
of these expressions is that of Prof. C. H. Toy. 
In 1913 he published his ^^Introduction to the 
History of Eeligions/' a master work which is a 
comprehensive survey of present knowledge of 
earlier stages of religious development. The 
main course of that development he outlines as 
follows : 

^^ Unity exists among the lowest and among 
the highest religious systems. Among savage 
and half-civilized cults there are no important 
differences — they all have the same ideas re- 
specting the nature and functions of supernat- 
ural Powers and the ways of approaching them. 
In the higher cults a process of differentiation 
goes on for a certain time while each is develop- 
ing its special characteristics, and then a coun- 
ter movement sets in — they all tend to come 
together by suppressing local features and 
emphasizing general ideas. Thus at the present 
day there are groups of Buddhists, Zoroastrians, 
Jews, Christians, and Moslems that, without 
abandoning their several faiths, find themselves 
in substantial accord on some essential points. 



RELIGION AT ITS BEST 23 

The unity of savages is the unity of undeveloped 
thought ; the later unity rests on discrimination 
between fundamentals and accessories." P. 
572. 

This summary statement of the course of the 
development of the religious aspect of human 
life in history by one of the most respected of 
living scholars is full of significance. No one, 
probably, has a more accurate and comprehen- 
sive knowledge of the history of religions and of 
religion, and certainly no one has brought to 
their interpretation greater sanity and sagacity 
of mind. This short paragraph, near the end 
of a work of pure scholarship, is of vast conse- 
quence. For if we may trust this representa- 
tive of the Comparative Science of Eeligion, we 
have reached a point at which it is actually pos- 
sible to plot the curve of humanity ^s thought and 
feeling from the dawn of history to the present, 
and to see the goal toward which the whole proc- 
ess is tending. It is from unity to unity, from 
the unity of crude, savage views, through numer- 
ous differences in the long intermediate period 
when men were developing their powers and 
learning to think clearly, to a new unity on the 
heights of life. 

That is, we have actually passed the time for 
guesses and fanciful theories such as those of 
Max Mueller and his contemporaries. Knowl- 
edge has come. About the primitive unity of 
religious thought and the main direction of de- 



24 THE SYMPATHY OF KELIGIONS 

velopment there is substantial agreement among 
those whose studies give them a right to an opin- 
ion ; and, as I shall show later, there is nearly as 
great unanimity in regard to the prospect as to 
the retrospect. The religion of savages is sub- 
stantially the same the world over, and there is 
no generic difference between it and the religion 
of prehistoric men as we reconstruct it from its 
survivals in the religions of the present. Thus 
in the latest ^'History of Eeligion,'^ by Prof. 
George F. Moore, it is stated that most of the 
great religions appear upon the scene of history 
as national polytheisms, to a considerable degree 
moralised; ^^what went before that lies as com- 
pletely beyond the horizon of history as the be- 
ginnings of civilisation. But they carry on 
many survivals of a prehistoric stage of culture, 
embedded in the ritual and myth of public re- 
ligions, or as superstitions among the masses. 
These features persist with the tenacity of an 
organic inheritance ; in times of demoralisation 
or decadence they revive and prevail. At hot- 
torn they are all alike, being in fact the one inex- 
tirpable religion of the race, entailed by remote 
ancestors. '^ (P. vi. Italics mine.) Investi- 
gators in this field everywhere find the same 
thing. ^^The phenomena which occur in the 
higher religions as survivals are ju^t as intelligi- 
ble in Babylonia or in Greece as in Africa or 
Australia. '^ ^^From continent to continent,'^ 
says Prof. J. Estlin Carpenter, ^^a multitude of 



EELIGION AT ITS BEST 25 

observers have gathered an immense range of 
facts, which show that amid numerous differ- 
ences in detail the religions of the lower culture 
may all be ranked together on the basis of a 
common interpretation of the surrounding 
world." These ^^ animistic'' or ^^ poly daemon- 
istic religions belong to no specific ethnic group. 
They appear either in existing practice or in the 
shape of occasional survivals in all of the three 
great racial divisions of mankind — the white or 
Caucasic, the yellow or Mongolian, and the black 
or Negroid. They are to be found under the 
Equator and among the Arctic snows." 
*^ Comparative Eeligion," pp. 54, 55. 

So, too. Prof. H. Oldenberg, speaking of the 
mistakes made in the first efforts to understand 
the religion of the Veda, remarks that ^^the mo- 
ment a search was made through the ancient 
Indian and the related European civilisations 
for such remains of prehistoric and anticipatory 
culture, the conviction forced itself irresistibly 
on scholars that the correct method had been 
found. Problems quickly resolved themselves, 
which theretofore dared scarcely be approached. 
The most striking agreements were disclosed be- 
tween the various types of myth and cult scat- 
tered at this very day over the earth among our 
savages and barbarians, and the type of myth 
and cult which had lain embedded in the Veda as 
a mass of unintelligible facts, wholly irreconcila- 
ble with any interpretation derived from the 



26 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

known intellectual character of the Vedic 
world. ' ' . • . Investigators such as Tylor, Lang 
and Mannhardt made the discovery ' ' that, very 
much like their weapons and utensils, so too the 
religion of the lowest orders of man, the world 
over, was everywhere one and the same in its es- 
sential elements. By some intrinsic necessity, 
there is always imposed upon this low state of 
evolution just this particular type of ideas and 
customs, which is the normal one and as such 
may be looked for with absolute certainty." 
' ' Ancient India, ' ' pp. 56, 58. 

From this ^^Old Stone Age of religion" there 
have come down to the ages of culture a number 
of relics almost unintelligible to us, but which an 
American Indian or a Polynesian native would 
have no difficulty in understanding, *^ similar 
ideas and customs being familiar to him." 
Many of these ideas have not wholly lost their 
vitality and, together with the ancient latent but 
still easily aroused fears, constitute a sort of 
underground religion which is an important fac- 
tor in the life of civilized people to-day. After 
the reader has been ^ introduced" to religion at 
its best, in the New Testament, in Plato, and 
in the great poets and seers, this primitive re- 
ligion can be more profitably and sympatheti- 
cally studied. Now that the religious idea 
w^hich was implicit in humanity's first grasps at 
truth has become explicit and disentangled from 
the many errors with which it was so long con- 



EELIGION AT ITS BEST 27 

fused, the crude beginnings of religious evolu- 
tion lose their repulsive and depressing charac- 
ter and become invested with a new interest. 
Even in its gropings through dark superstitions, 
the human spirit, we can now see, was on its way 
to something better, and the many religions 
whose conflicts have desolated the world are 
but manifestations and imperfect stages of the 
religion of the world. A comprehensive survey 
of humanity's spiritual career should produce 
some of the finest fruits of a high culture. It 
should widen life, deepen insight and enlarge the 
heart by revealing the real significance of pri- 
meval searchings, hopings and longings, and the 
way in which man's religious thought and feel- 
ing gradually rose above primitive chaos and 
confusion and attained to elevated and purified 
forms. This discovery of the unity in the di- 
versity in the aspiring life of mankind brings a 
happy sense of solidarity with the seekers after 
God in all ages. It is a joy not merely to believe 
with the poet, but to know with the scholar, 

" that in all ages 
Every human heart is human, 
That in even savage bosoms 
There are longings, yearnings, strivings 
For the good they comprehend not, 
That the feeble hands and helpless, 
Groping blindly in the darkness, 
Touch God's right hand in the darkness, 
And are lifted up and strengthened." 



CHAPTER II 

DATA AND METHODS 




HERE have been many attempts at a 
scientific study of religion, nearly all 
of which have been glaring failures. 
Either the men of religion feel that 
the essence of the matter has been entirely 
missed, or the men of science see that methods of 
investigation are defective. In any case, the 
results have been without great value. The rea- 
son is most instructive. Students in this field 
have too often begun without realizing that the 
data are of a peculiar kind and that the methods 
of physical science are inapplicable. Science 
succeeds in physics. It can deal with data fur- 
nished by the senses, with the measurable, with 
things, with the elternal aspects of the world. 
It ascertains the sequence of events, and gives 
us a measure of control over them. It enables 
us to predict and prepare for the future, to make 
changes in our physical environment and to ad- 
just ourselves to what we cannot change. 

The data with which the student of religion 
has to deal are of an entirely different order. 
They are not physical, are not observed through 

28 



DATA AND METHODS 29 

the senses, they cannot be weighed or measured, 
and the methods of physical science are inapplic- 
able in their investigation. For what is in ques- 
tion here is not things but values, not physical 
phenomena but the deepest experiences of men, 
their hopes and fears, their longings, aspirations 
and strivings toward ideal perfection. It is 
obvious that no one can understand the aspiring 
life of mankind who does not share it. An abso- 
lutely perfect intellect dissociated from the emo- 
tional nature would be incapacitated for the in- 
terpretation of data that belong to the feeling 
life. It could have no first-hand knowledge of 
what was to be understood. For there are no 
values apart from some appreciation of them, 
no hopes, loves and longings which are not felt. 
This was pointed out long ago, but the lesson 
of it has not always been taken to heart. Aris- 
totle remarks at the beginning of the Nicoma- 
chean Ethics that ^Hhe competent student of the 
noble and just should have received a good moral 
training. ' ' If he has not, he will, of course, be 
without the experiences which are to be studied. 
He will have no appreciation of the values to be 
understood. No amount of knowledge of He- 
brew and Greek and Sanskrit, no training in 
physics and mathematics, can equip an emotion- 
less literal mind for the interpretation of what 
lies beyond its sphere, of what it can know of 
only by report. Indeed, not even a second-hand 
knowledge would be possible to one without 



30 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

those normal religious experiences which alone 
can serve as a key to an understanding of the re- 
ligious life of the race. 

The fact is that our first successes in the en- 
deavor to find order in the world having been in 
physical science, we have too easily assumed that 
the methods which have proved useful in dealing 
with the world of things will apply to that which 
is not physical. We have uncritically accepted 
the presupposition of Kant that there is one 
science of nature, whereas we may have to recog- 
nize that, co-ordinate with physics, there is an- 
other fundamental and autonomous science 
whose province is the conscious life of man, and 
possibly a third, namely, biology, in which the 
data and principles of the other two are most 
perplexingly mixed. 

It is interesting to find that eminent biologists 
are perceiving this situation. Thus, Prof. J. 
Arthur Thomson writes, '' — ^We recognize, then, 
three orders of facts: the physical order where 
mechanism reigns, where mechanical formulae 
suffice for the description of what goes on ; the 
animate order, where mechanism is transcended ; 
and the psychical order, where mechanism is ir- 
relevant. It is plain that the physical order 
overlaps the animate order, for organisms are 
material systems, and their life includes a con- 
catenation of chemico-physical processes. At 
the same time, as we have seen, we cannot ex- 
plain the fundamental properties of the organ- 



DATA AND METHODS 31 

ism, which we start with in biology, in chemico- 
physical terms, nor would a complete chemico- 
physical description of what goes on in the life 
of the organism be the kind of description which 
the biologist seeks. The same applies to the 
psychical order, which is overlapped by the bio- 
logical. In short, the sciences are differentiated 
not only by their subject matter, but by their 
characteristic questions and methods and con- 
cepts/' ^^The Wonder of Life,'' pp. 644, 645. 
(Italics mine.) 

The mind has such a craving for unity that 
there is always a strong temptation to simplify 
great problems unduly by refusing to consider 
refractory data. If, however, we wish to be 
something more than mere a priori thinkers, we 
must admit that the spiritual phenomena which 
are manifested in the religious life of humanity 
cannot be fruitfully studied by those who will 
not admit that anything is knowledge which can- 
not be expressed in physical, chemical and math- 
ematical terms. It is clear that although reality 
may be in some sense one, it presents two very 
different aspects. And there are two corre- 
sponding tasks which humanity faces: (1) to 
learn the truth about the physical environment 
and to adjust it to our needs and ourselves to 
that in it which we cannot change, and (2) to 
learn the truth about our own inner life, to be- 
come clear as to our own intent, to develop our 
personality, to discover the ideas and attitudes 



32 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

and actions through which we may take our 
places in the spiritual order. 

The first problem is that of physical science. 
It is succeeding by its methods of observation, 
comparison, hypothesis, experiment, and verifi- 
cation. The second is that of religion, and its 
method, that of the prophets and seers, is intui- 
tion. By the former method we learn nothing 
of the soul, by the latter nothing of what we call 
the external, physical world. Only confusion 
can result from a failure to make and keep this 
distinction clear. The pure in heart do see God, 
but no purity of heart will reveal to a man the 
date of Deuteronomy or make of him an author- 
ity in history or the higher criticism. Religious 
truth comes by insight, and this is clear in the 
case of all the prophets from Isaiah to Emerson, 
but inspiration never saves a prophet from mak- 
ing mistakes when he ventures to speak of the 
outer world instead of the inner life. 

Of vast importance also is the explicit recog- 
nition of the fact that religious experience is one 
thing while its interpretation is another. There 
are those who revel in the experience and do not 
care for the interpretation. They regard all the 
passions as their own excuse for being and have 
no desire to understand. They are as incapable 
of rationalizing their deeper experiences and of 
creating a philosophy of religion as are the mere 
critics, who vainly try to study love and hope 
and aspiration from the outside and who seek, 



DATA AND METHODS 33 

through erudition, to make up for their defi- 
ciency of insight. If good work is ever done in 
this field, it can be the product of those only 
whose hearts have not been chilled by their 
scholarship and whose fineness of insight has 
not been spoiled by their enthusiasms. 

Is this combination of qualities and equipment 
impossible? There are those who think so. 
Eenan said that to understand a religion it is 
necessary to have believed it, but to believe it no 
longer. The philosopher of religion would then 
be an *^ archaeologist of passion, '^ and he would 
also be unserviceable, since to men who have to 
live forward it is useless to understand back- 
ward. Of course, * ' We must master a passion 
before we can understand it," but it is not neces- 
sary to have outlived it. Prof. Santayana 
points out that the achievement of the poets and 
philosophers of civilization is to make our ex- 
perience of love and religion rational, just as 
scientific thinking makes rational our experience 
of the outer world. They help us to domesticate 
our emotions by ^^understanding their cause or 
conceiving their ideal goal.'^ The barbarian 
does not idealize love or rationalize religion. 
His passions are as lava ^^hot from the crater, 
in no way moulded, smelted or refined. He has 
no thought of subjugating impulses into the har- 
mony of reason. He does not master life, but is 
mastered by it. Accordingly the love he de- 
scribes has no wings; it issues in nothing." 



34 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

When he has loved intensely, he says that he has 
lived; *^he would be right, if the significance of 
life were to be measured by the intensity of the 
feeling it contained, and if intelligence were not 
the highest form of vitality. ^ ' '' Poetry and Ee- 
ligion,^'pp. 200, 201. 

There are again many who feel a profound 
aversion for the absurd results of the attempts 
of men to study scientifically religious experi- 
ences which they do not share and with which 
they have no sympathy, but regard rather as 
anachronisms. They see clearly that very often 
those who have philosophized about religion 
have ended by explaining it away. What they 
do not see is that fruitful results will be obtained 
when religious experience is studied, not by 
methods which are applicable only in physical 
science, but by the methods through which alone 
our entire knowledge of spiritual laws has been 
gained. 

And in any event the effort to understand even 
the highest and holiest of experiences can not be 
escaped. For it is the nature of life to go on- 
ward, and it inevitably passes beyond its early 
spontaneous stage to the later stage of reflec- 
tion. There comes a time when it is not enough 
to feel, to desire and to act. We want to under- 
stand what we do. Nearly all important func- 
tions are exercised long before we begin to think 
about them, but, unless development is arrested, 
they eventually come under the scrutiny of the 



DATA AND METHODS 35 

intellect. That is, unless we remain children we 
must become philosophers, for philosophy is life 
in its reflective stage, life trying to understand 
itself. We realize with Socrates that ^^the un- 
examined life is not worth living." 

Nor is reflection a mere luxury. It does not 
appear before it is needed. When it comes, 
mere impulse has done for us all that it can do. 
Further progress cannot be without thought. 
Our art, government and religion through long 
periods grew as grows the grass. But all of our 
activities eventually become self-conscious, and, 
though life retains its spontaneous impulsive 
character, it needs light on its path, it must criti- 
cise its methods and definitely strive toward its 
natural goals. Esthetics, political science and 
theology are not merely inevitable ; they are in- 
dispensable factors in progress. 

He who would write an Introduction to the 
Comparative Science of Eeligion, or a philoso- 
phy of religion, ought himself to have a first- 
hand knowledge of some of the experiences to be 
compared and interpreted. That is, he must not 
merely guess at the interior life of men after ob- 
serving their outward actions, and Eenan is 
wrong in saying that he must study only his 
memories. He must feel as he thinks and think 
as he feels, a statement which students of physi- 
cal science naturally regard with suspicion. 
Their attitude is entirely intelligible, for they 
have learned by experience that the only emo- 



36 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

tion which does not disturb and injure their 
thinking is the love of truth, a passionate dis- 
passionateness. In ethics, aesthetics and re- 
ligion, however, the case is entirely different. 
In these fields the feeling life, the religious emo- 
tions of faith, hope, courage, love, trust and 
aspiration, constitute the material to be studied, 
they are the data whose correct interpretation 
is sought. Thought is often distorted by emo- 
tion, but not always or necessarily so. Indeed 
it is sometimes clearest and most rigorous when 
blended with a passionate love of beauty and 
longing for the ideals of perfection. Never in 
human history has thought reached a higher 
point than in Plato, yet his pages glow with en- 
thusiasm. For him the phil in philosophy was 
as important as the sophia. For him the ideal 
human career could be stated in terms of the pro- 
gressive sublimation of love. His highest phi- 
losophy was his own life understood, his own 
love pervaded by insight. Had he been merely 
a perfect logical machine and his philosophy **a 
soulless play of concepts,'^ he would not be what 
after twenty-four centuries he still is, the most 
influential thinker that has been on the planet. 
The aesthetic, moral, social and religious life 
which he has interpreted, and whose significance 
and ideal he has pointed out, he shared. With- 
out these experiences, he could not have had the 
insight which is still one of our greatest aids in 
understanding ourselves, and without the in- 



DATA AND METHODS 37 

sight the experiences themselves would have 
been but the raw material of that rational, disci- 
plined and understood life which is the ideal of 
civilization. 




CHAPTER III 

PURE RELIGION 

N introduction to religion should, as 
we have seen, deal with conclusions 
first and with beginnings afterward. 
Or rather, since, as Prof. William 
James has said, nothing has concluded that we 
should conclude with regard to it, an introduc- 
tion should be to the highest form religion has 
yet reached, to the purified product of its de- 
velopment through the ages until now. What, 
then, amid all its historic accessories, is this 
essential ? What is pure religion ? What is the 
fundamental religious experience? 

The simplest, clearest and most satisfac- 
tory answer may be given in the words of the 
latest of the prophets. Emerson says ^' Trust 
thyself,'' and then immediately asks, *^Who is 
the Trustee?" To this he replies, and whoso- 
ever will may verify his statement in experience, 
that the best self, which is the object of trust, is 
the Over-Soul. There is no sharp line or defi- 
nite boundary in our being between the human 
and the divine, between man and God. * ' Within 
man is the soul of the holy, the wise silence, the 
universal beauty, the eternal one." 

38 



PUEE EELIGION 39 

What is the result of a clear realization of this 
truth I The answer is seen in Emerson himself. 
His essays are a record of his life, his conscious 
fellowship with the Over-Soul, his constant sense 
of union with God. To the defining intellect, 
which loves thoughts with clear edges, such a 
statement is unsatisfactory, for it finds difficulty 
in conceiving of what religious experience re- 
ports. Such a relation of the self to the back- 
ground of life seems to it destructive of person- 
ality. Logic says, ^^ either God or man." But 
it is not the function of logic to decide what is or 
may be. It has often been pointed out that the 
best evidence of the possibility of a thing is the 
fact that it exists. And the fact with which 
logic must get along as best it may is that it is 
precisely when personality is most highly de- 
veloped that there is the most profound sense of 
union with God. 

No one who has ever truly prayed has failed 
to realize this in experience. Consider those 
moments when we are filled with longings, as- 
pirations, high desires, when we gaze upon 
heights above us. We say that we pray. But 
is it not true that we feel that an appeal is made 
to us, that we are solicited to come up higher, 
that our prayer to God is also in a sense God^s 
prayer to us? We do not ^^make'^ the prayer; 
it wells up in us, there is praying in us. We are 
never more truly or completely ourselves than 
in these moments when we are conscious of the 



40 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

life in which we live and move, and think and 
pray and have onr being. We then understand 
precisely what Emerson meant in saying, **I, 
the imperfect, adore my own perfect,'' and we 
know that he had and we are having the experi- 
ence which the greatest of all teachers in the long 
ago rightly interpreted to mean that we are the 
children of the perfect. 

It requires courage to believe this, to take seri- 
ously the great statements with which we have 
been familiar from childhood ; but from the di- 
rect implications of our deepest experiences 
there is absolutely no escape. The perception 
of this truth has been reached independently in 
too many times and places for it to be regarded 
as a speculation or a fancy. That there should 
be many different interpretations of the funda- 
mental religious experience is only what is to be 
expected, and this is what we actually find. 
Even in the New Testament it is described in 
various ways. Indeed, the Apostle Paul some- 
times speaks of the Great Companion as God, 
sometimes as the Holy Spirit, and in other places 
as Christ. 

One of his statements is of marvellous felicity 
and precision. For conciseness and complete- 
ness it is probably not surpassed in any of the 
literatures of the world. We are, he says, to 
work out our own salvation, and as we perform 
this our moral task we are to be sustained, in- 
spired and consoled by the religious conscious- 



PUEE EELiaiON 41 

ness that ^4t is God whicli worketh in us both to 
will and to do/' According to Emerson, great 
men have always trusted this consciousness, 
thereby ^^ betraying their perception that the 
Eternal was stirring at their heart, working 
through their hands, predominating in all their 
being/' 

It is not possible to collate here all the many 
passages in which Paul refers to this experience 
of fellowship with the divine which flooded his 
life with light and joy. Those who are familiar 
with the New Testament realize that for him 
God, the Holy Spirit, Christ, are almost inter- 
changeable terms. To the Galatians, e.g., he 
writes, — *'I live ; and yet no longer I, but Christ 
liveth in me. ' ' He often speaks of Christ dwell- 
ing in the heart, of the believer being in Christ, 
and in writing to the Colossians, he uses the ex- 
pression, — ^^Your life is hid with Christ in 
God,'' — ^^^When Christ, who is your life," etc. 
In the letters to the Eomans, Corinthians, Gala- 
tians and Ephesians, the word ^^ spirit" is used 
more than one hundred times, and no very clear 
distinction is attempted between God, the spirit 
of God, the spirit of Christ, and the spirit.^ In- 
deed, in one place,^ he says expressly, ' ' The Lord 
means the Spirit. ' ' He also declares ^ that he 

1 For the purpose of this discussion it is immaterial 
i?«1iether the " Pauline " writings are from Paul or from a 
group of writers. 

211 Cor. 3: 17. sH Ck)r. 5: 16. 



42 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

cares not to /^ know Christ after the flesh/' not 
being concerned with the career of Jesus, but 
with a life-giving spirit which is actively at work 
recreating the lives of men. The Moham- 
medans call Jesus ruhu'llah, the Spirit of God, 
in this agreeing with the great apostle to the 
gentiles. 

The author of the Fourth Gospel also employs 
the term spirit and expressly says that ^^God 
is Spirit,'' yet his favorite name for the Over- 
Soul is ^^ Father," and he uses it 126 times. 
According to the profound spiritual genius who 
gave us this gospel, the life of Christ is an ideal 
type which is to be reproduced by his followers. 
His Father is their Father, and the Spirit is to 
lead them into all truth, and enable them to do 
works greater even than those of their master. 
They are to be in the Father as he was in the 
Father, and were to verify experimentally in 
their lives the truth he taught. St. Augustine 
was faithfully following this great writer's con- 
ception when he said, — Non Christiani sumus, 
sed Christi, — ^we are not so much Christians as 
Christs. 

It is obvious that the experience of communion 
with the divine referred to by the New Testa- 
ment writers is fundamentally the same, the dif- 
ferent statements of it being merely so many 
efforts at interpretation. Clear also is the fact 
they alone have the key to an understanding of 
these statements who have themselves had the 



PURE EELIGION 43 

experience. To them, these ancient writings are 
an open book. To all others they are mere 
mysticism. To the latter the Adyo?, the Word, 
is merely the ^^technicality of an extinct philoso- 
phy," while those who have found their best 
self and at the same time have found religion 
and God, are no strangers to ''the light that 
lighteth every man, ' ' and which now and always 
is coming into the world. 

A recent writer remarks, — ^^If there is such 
a thing as religion, it must exist equally for all 
men." Having learned to distinguish between 
the essence of religion and its accidents, be- 
tween the fundamental experience and its inter- 
pretations, we find this statement just. Having 
found the key, it becomes very interesting to un- 
lock the many doors, to look for the one religion 
inside all ecclesiastical inclosures and outside 
of all. Here, for example, is a modern instance. 
Eev. Abraham Mitrie Rihbany, in ^^ A Far Jour- 
ney," records the following experience of his 
when he was a poor immigrant just from Syria : 

^^ During my days of enforced and painful idle- 
ness in New York, Castle Garden was my chief 
resort, and it was there that a spiritual vision 
came to me unique in my experience. . . . Feel- 
ing deeply depressed and disheartened, late one 
afternoon, I strolled down to the famous park. 
The sea and sky were very beautiful, but I 
seemed to have no share in their beauty. ... I 
felt very lonely, and longed, as a babe, for my 



44 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

mother. But as the sun began to fade away 
from the sky, I began, as by a miracle, to feel an 
inward supply of power and courage. The 
beauty of the sea and sky seemed to have been 
made for me; I was owner of all I saw. I 
seemed to myself for the moment to look upon 
the world through the mystic eyes of my Oriental 
ancestors, and see it, so far as a youth could, as 
the garment of God. ... I remember with per- 
fect clearness that I said audibly, ' The God who 
created me and these wonders before me will 
never forsake me,' and arose and walked like a 
strong man. ' ' 

Of extraordinary interest, in this connection, 
is the effort of the late Prof. William James to 
state the fundamental religious experience apart 
from all interpretations, ^^to reduce religion to 
its lowest admissible terms, to that minimum, 
free from individualistic excrescences, which 
all religions contain as their nucleus, and on 
which it is hoped that all religious persons may 
agree. That established, we should have a re- 
sult which might be small, but would at least be 
solid.'' ^* Varieties of Eeligious Experience," 
p. 504. He remarks that while there is a great 
variety in the over-beliefs of men, in their 
thoughts about religion, **the feelings on the one 
hand and the conduct on the other are always the 
same, for Stoic, Christian and Buddhist saints 
are practically indistinguishable in their lives." 

The description which this man of science then 



> J 



PURE EELIGION 45 

gives of *^pure religion'^ is remarkable chiejBy 
for the language in which it is expressed, his con 
elusions being already familiar. *^ There is 
he says, ^*a certain uniform deliverance in which 
religions all appear to meet. It consists of two 
parts : — 

1. An uneasiness. 

2. Its solution. 

1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest 
terms, is a sense that there is something wrong 
about us as we naturally stand. 

2. The solution is a sense that we are saved 
from the wrongness by making proper connec- 
tion with the higher powers. 

In the more developed minds . . . the wrong- 
ness takes a moral character, and the salvation 
a mystical tinge. I think we shall keep well 
within the limits of what is common to all such 
minds if we formulate the essence of their re- 
ligious experience in terms like these : — 

* * The individual, so far as he suffers from his 
wrongness and criticises it, is to that extent con- 
sciously beyond it, and in at least possible touch 
with something higher, if anything higher exist. 
Along with the wrong part there is thus a better 
part of him, even though it may be but a most 
helpless germ. With which part he should iden- 
tify his real being is by no means obvious at this 
stage ; but when stage 2 (the stage of solution or 
salvation) arrives, the man identifies his real be- 
ing with the germinal higher part of himself; 



46 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

and does so in the following way. He becomes 
conscious that this higher part is conterminous 
and continuous with a mobe of the same qual- 
ity, which is operative in the universe outside of 
him, and which he can keep in working touch 
with, and in a fashion get on board of and save 
himself when all his lower being has gone to 
pieces in the wreck. ' ^ lb. 508. 

This reads like a paraphrase of Emerson's 
essay on the Over-Soul. ' ' We grant that human 
life is mean, but how did we find out that it was 
mean? What is the ground of this uneasiness 
of ours?'^ It is because there is a better self 
which we trust in self -trust and which is con- 
terminous with a MORE of the same quality, with 
^^that great nature in which we rest as the earth 
lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that 
Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's 
particular being is contained and made one with 
all other ; that common heart of which all sincere 
conversation is the worship ; that overpowering 
reality which confutes our tricks and talents, 
and constrains everyone to pass for what he is, 
and to speak from his character and not from 
his tongue, and which evermore tends to pass 
into our thought and hand and become wisdom 
and virtue and power and beauty." ^^As there 
is no screen or ceiling between our heads and 
the infinite heavens, so there is no bar or wall in 
the soul, where man, the effect, ceases, and God, 
the cause, begins. The walls are taken away. 



PUEE RELIGION 47 

We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual 
nature, to all the attributes of God." 

The most explicit statement is perhaps that 
given in the ^^ Method of Nature." Emerson 
here attempts to tell us what he thinks about the 
fundamental religious experience : ^^I conceive 
a man as always spoken to from behind, and un- 
able to turn his head and see the speaker. . . . 
That well-known voice speaks in all languages, 
governs all men, and none ever caught a glimpse 
of its form. If the man will exactly obey it, it 
will adopt him, so that he shall not any longer 
separate it from himself in his thought, he shall 
seem to be it, he shall be it. If he listen with 
insatiable ears, richer and greater wisdom is 
taught him, the sound swells to ravishing music, 
he is borne away as with a flood, he becomes 
careless of his food and of his house, he is the 
fool of ideas, and leads a heavenly life. But if 
his eye is set on the things to be done, and not 
on the truth that is still taught, and for the sake 
of which the things are to be done, then the voice 
grows faint, and at last is but a humming in his 
ears." 

Everywhere, therefore, we are confronted 
with the same great fact. Multitudes of men in 
various ages, races and nations have left inde- 
pendent records of their converse with the di- 
vine. When they try to frame conceptions of 
this divine mobe with which the better self is 
conterminous and continuous, the differences be- 



48 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

gin. Few are content with Prof. James to state 
the bare ^^fact that the conscious person is con- 
tinuous with a wider self through which saving 
experiences come.^' Some speak of God or 
gods, while others are ^* satisfied to conceive of 
it as a stream of ideal tendency embedded in the 
eternal structure of the world. ^ ^ But whether 
we say God, Spirit, Christ, Buddha, Brahma, 
Over-Soul, Father or Living Presence, the thing 
of importance is the experience, not the name for 
the cause of it, the process by which the natural 
man is born of a new spirit and begins to adjust 
his life to the divine order, and not any surmise 
as to the way in which that process is to be ex- 
plained. 

A remarkable illustration of the universality 
of this experience is its occurrence among 
those who have been taught not to believe in its 
possibility. Buddhism was originally a system 
of ethical culture through which the individ- 
ual was to save himself. Gotama taught his 
disciples not to depend upon assistance from 
the gods. They were to refrain from all reli- 
gious speculation. When they asked him, 
*^Does the Buddha exist after death, or does he 
not exist ? Or does he both exist and not exist, 
or does he neither exist nor not exist T^ Go- 
tama 's reply was that all such questions were 
pragmatically valueless, in that they made no 
difference to those whose main concern was the 



PURE RELIGION 49 

absence of desire, freedom from passion, right 
effort, higher insight, inward peace. 

Permanently to repress the religious nature 
proved impossible, and in some later forms of 
Buddhism the teacher who had explicitly denied 
that the gods had any place in his way of sal- 
vation became himself a spiritual presence with 
whom the believer might enter into blessed com- 
munion. As Maitreya, he hears their prayer, 
guides them to truth, and they aspire to become 
^'partakers of the Buddha nature." 

What John Fiske called ''The Everlasting 
Reality of Religion'^ is strikingly illustrated in 
this evolution into a religion of a system of 
ethical culture which denied the existence of 
the soul and which had no place for prayer or 
the belief in God. In an article on ''The The- 
istic Evolution of Buddhism, '^ New Worlds Vol. 
I, No. 1, pp. 89-106, Prof. J. E. Carpenter com- 
pares Buddhism with Christianity as follows: 

"The last words addressed by Gotama to his 
disciples summed up his fundamental principle 
of escape from the round of transmigration by 
personal moral discipline : Work out your own 
deliverance with diligence. The later Buddhism 
might quite well have added the correlate of 
the second part of the paradox of Paul and 
said, — For it is the Buddha that worketh in you 
to will and to do. Hindu devotion, therefore, 
readily moved along lines that have many paral- 



50 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

lels in the West. When the Brahman Eama- 
chandra was converted to Buddhism in the 
eleventh century, he seems to have been driven 
by persecution from his native land into the 
Ganges Valley, and to have found shelter in 
Ceylon. There he poured out his trust in a 
little garland of verse • . . which might have 
been written by a mystic of mediaeval Christen- 
dom. ^Whether I live in heaven or in hell, 
whether in the city of ghosts or of men, let my 
mind remain fixed on thee, for there is no other 
happiness for me. Thou art my father, mother, 
brother, sister ; thou art my fast friend in dan- 
ger, dear one, thou art my lord, my teacher 
who imparts to me knowledge sweet as nectar. 
Thou art my wealth, my enjoyment, my pleas- 
ure, my affluence, my greatness, my reputation, 
my knowledge and my life. Thou art my all, 
all-knowing Buddha!' '^ 




CHAPTER IV 

SPIRITUAL. BIOLOGY 

EOF. FEANCIS G. PEABODY has 

spoken of religion as ^^the living sci- 
ence of spiritual biology/' The ex- 
pression is as felicitous as it is strik- 
ing. For life is one through all its ranges 
from the amoeba to man. The word biology- 
suggests to most minds the study of the struc- 
ture and functions of plants and the lower ani- 
mals. Others understand it to mean also zo- 
ology, physiology, agriculture, animal breeding, 
bacteriology and parasitology. But the science 
of life must he as wide as life itself, and if we 
can attain to knowledge of those higher ranges 
of human life which we call spiritual, that 
knowledge, when it is systematized and set in 
order, may properly be called spiritual biology. 
There are two reasons why the science of life 
has not usually been taken in this inclusive way. 
In the first place, the simpler forms of life are 
the easiest to understand, the material is abun- 
dant and we feel free to experiment with it as 
we please ; and, in the second, the method which 
alone is fruitful in the study of the highest pur- 
poses, aspirations and ideal strivings of hu- 

51 



52 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

manity is, as we have seen, different from that 
employed in physical science, and the knowledge 
which has been accumulated, though of supreme 
practical importance, consists of a collection of 
insights and spiritual laws which have not been 
organized into a coherent system. 

All things conspire to deepen our apprecia- 
tion of the significance of the unity of life. 
Thus the greatest and most fruitful theory in 
modern thinking is that of evolution. Derived 
from a study of the lower forms of life, it has 
revolutionized our views of all the higher forms. 
Edwin Grant Conklin, Professor of Biology in 
Princeton University, says apropos of this fact 
{Science, March 5, 1915), ^^The greatest theme 
of evolution is not the origin of species, nor 
even the origin of living things, but rather the 
oneness of all life. This is indeed the greatest 
principle of biology, namely, that through all 
the endless diversity of the living world there 
runs this fundamental similarity and unity. ' ^ 

But not only is human life one with the life 
of humbler creatures; it is itself a unity. Its 
physical functions which are studied by the 
physiologist are related to the conscious activi- 
ties which fall within the province of psychol- 
ogy, ethics and religion. Philosophers have 
sought to understand the relation between the 
physical and the conscious, and religious think- 
ers to arrive at some rational view concerning 
the relation between lower, natural life con- 



SPIRITUAL BIOLOaY 53 

trolled by appetite, impulse and instinct and 
the higher spiritual life of love and service, of 
the worship of truth, beauty and goodness and 
consecration to the ideals of perfection. This 
higher life is, like the lower, not a chaos, but a 
realm of law, and there is, as the New Testa- 
ment says, though we use the words in a differ- 
ent sense, a *^law of the spirit of life.'' This 
region has not been fully explored, but it is 
well known. Many visit it, and some dwell in 
it. To investigate this inner life, these higher 
ranges of our being, to reveal the conditions 
and order of its development, is the function of 
spiritual biology. 

Centuries ago the prophet Jeremiah said, 
^^ After those days, saith the Lord, I will put 
my law in their inward parts, and write it in 
their hearts. . . . And they shall teach no more 
every man his neighbor, saying. Know the Lord : 
for they shall all know me, from the least of 
them unto the greatest of them.'' And another 
Hebrew writer, Deut. 30: 11-14, says of the di- 
vine commandment that it is not in heaven or 
beyond the sea that messengers should be sent 
for it. ^^But the word is very nigh thee, in 
thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest 
do it." We may not understand perfectly the 
issues of the ancient time from which these 
words come, but the voice of the Hebrew seers 
calls from the same depths as that of forest 
thinkers of India who have left us the Upani- 



54 THE SYMPATHY OF KELIGIONS 

shads. And this at least is certain : they knew 
where to look to find the spiritual laws which 
it is life and happiness and salvation to know 
and to obey. 

Now it was the conscious enterprise of Emer- 
son's life to discover these laws which are writ- 
ten in the human heart. He read books, he 
talked and travelled, but he was always listen- 
ing, he was alert to ^'detect and watch that 
gleam of light which flashes across the mind 
from within.'' And he was not unsuccessful. 
He has not, it is true, left us a spiritual biology. 
But if we could organize the numerous insights 
he has bequeathed to us and unite them in a sys- 
tem with the spiritual laws which have been dis- 
covered by other seers we would indeed have a 
science of the spiritual life. For the systemati- 
zation we can wait. The practically important 
fact is that we may know and use the laws. 

What did the Over-Soul say to Emerson, who 
believed that by ^4owly listening we may hear 
the right word"? Open any of the essays, and 
you find the answer. They are the result of his 
effort to report faithfully his conversations with 
the divine. One essay is named /^Spiritual 
Laws," but almost every other deserves the title 
equally well. A few of these experimentally 
verifiable principles are as follows : 

What a man does, that he has. 

He may have his own. Everywhere he may 
take what belongs to his spiritual est?ite, nor 



SPIRITUAL BIOLOGY 55 

can he take anything else though all doors were 
open, nor can all the force of men hinder him 
from taking so much. 

He may see what he maketh. 

He may set his own rate. 

He shall have his own society. 

A man passes for what he is worth. Always 
as much virtue as there is, so much appears ; as 
much goodness as there is, so much reverence it 
commands. Human character does evermore 
publish itself. 

Envy is ignorance ; imitation is suicide. 

Fear never but you shall be consistent in 
whatever variety of actions, so they be each 
honest and natural in their hour. 

Ineffable is the union of man and God in 
every act of the soul. The simplest person, who 
in his integrity worships God becomes God, yet 
forever and ever the influx of this better and 
universal self is new and unsearchable. ... It 
inspires in man an infallible trust. He has not 
the conviction, but the sight, that the best is the 
true, and may in that thought dismiss all par- 
ticular uncertainties and fears, and adjourn to 
the sure revelation of time the solution of his 
private riddles. He is sure that his welfare is 
dear to the heart of being. . . . He believes that 
he cannot escape from his good. The things 
that are really for thee gravitate to thee. And 
this is because the heart in thee is the heart of 
all. 



56 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

Our life is embosomed in beauty. 
Heartily know, 
When half-gods go, 
The gods arrive. 

That only which we have within, can we see 
without. If we meet no gods, it is because we 
harbor none. 

What is excellent, 

As God lives, is permanent. 

Emerson perceives and clearly states that 
^^mere morality'^ is impossible. Whenever the 
moral life is deep and strong, whenever men 
are loyal to the highest within them, there rises 
inevitably in their hearts a sense of harmony 
with the heart of things, a joyous confidence 
that their acts have more than temporary sig- 
nificance. In the famous Divinity School Ad- 
dress, Emerson puts it thus: ^^When a man 
says, ^I ought ^; when love warms him; when 
he chooses, warned from on high, the good and 
great deed ; then deep melodies wander through 
his soul from Supreme Wisdom. . . . The per- 
ception of this law of laws awakens in the mind 
a sentiment which we call the religious senti- 
ment, and which makes our highest happiness. 
. . . Thought may work cold and intransitive 
in things, and find no end or unity ; but the dawn 
of the sentiment of virtue on the heart gives 
and is the assurance that Law is sovereign over 



SPIEITUAL BIOLOGY 57 

all natures; and the worlds, time, space, eter- 
nity, do seem to break out into joy." 

It would be easy to continue these quotations, 
but for those who have had a normal spiritual 
experience and who therefore can recognize 
the accents of the Holy Ghost, this list will be 
suflficient. The seer of Concord, the ^ ^friend 
and helper of those who would live in the 
spirit," understood perfectly that his percep- 
tions were desultory, that while he had helped 
gather the material for a spiritual science, the 
house has not been built. And in the Divinity 
School Address he expresses the hope that a 
great spiritual genius will sometime appear to 
perform this constructive task. ^^I look for the 
hour when that supreme Beauty which ravished 
the souls of those Eastern men, and chiefly of 
those Hebrews, shall speak in the West also. 
The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures contain im- 
mortal sentences that have been bread of life 
to millions. But" (and here he well character- 
izes his own writings) ^Hhey have no epical 
integrity; are fragmentary; are not shown in 
their order to the intellect. I look for the new 
Teacher that shall follow so far those shining 
laws that he shall see them come full circle; 
shall see their rounding complete grace; shall 
see the world to be the mirror of the soul ; shall 
see the identity of the law of gravitation with 
purity of heart; and shall show that the Ought, 



58 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

that Duty, is one thing with Science, with 
Beauty, and with Joy. ^ ' 

The supreme fact in human life, apart from 
all interpretations or theories about it, is that 
as there is a physical order with which the 
physical part of us must make and maintain its 
adjustment, so there is a moral or spiritual or- 
der to which in the course of our development 
we become sensitive and with which we come 
into harmonious relation through a certain spir- 
itual attitude. For those who are perplexed 
and have not learned how -to establish this re- 
lation, Emerson is one of the best guides. His 
directions are simple : Get your life on a basis 
of truth, cease to pretend, trust the highest 
within you, and go forward without fear. 
Many have tried this and had a thrilling experi- 
ence. They have felt instantly that they have 
done right. ^^Deep melodies have wandered 
through their souls from the supreme wisdom. '^ 
As the electric energy is transmitted to the 
motor when the trolley is placed on the wire, so 
there is a sense of new life when the soul con- 
sciously consecrates itself to the highest. Be- 
wilderment ceases, and the mind orients itself, 
gets its bearings in the world. Some of those 
who have come to this phase of their spiritual 
career speak of it as a conversion, as a religious 
experience, and that is what it essentially is. 
For it means that man has **come to himself,'* 
that he has attained to a vivid awareness of the 



SPIRITUAL BIOLOGY 59 

moral and spiritual order, to a conscious real- 
ization of himself as a spirit, destined for citi- 
zenship in this ^^ kingdom prepared from the 
foundation of the world.'' He has discovered 
that the vast process of the cosmos which, in its 
physical aspects, seems indifferent to every- 
thing that is humanly precious, has after all a 
spiritual structure in which only the true and 
the loving can find a place and which automati- 
cally casts out him that loveth or maketh a lie. 



PAETn 
CHEISTIANITY AT ITS BEST 




CHAPTER V 

AS LOVE TO GOD 

" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 
This is the first and great commandment." 

T is clear, then, that when once we 
learn to distinguish between onr deep- 
est experiences and the different in- 
terpretations that may be put upon 
them, we at the same time begin to perceive the 
unity of humanity ^s spiritual life and to recog- 
nize the religion in and behind all the religions 
of the world. But this ^^pure religion '^ is 
something that we may eventually come to: 
neither as individuals nor as peoples do we 
begin with it. Practically all religious men 
are parts of a religious community, have their 
place in a historical religious movement such 
as Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, and are 
nourished on certain definite spiritual tradi- 
tions. To refuse to accept and profit by these 
concrete spiritual movements because they are 
not identical with absolute religion is like re- 
fusing to eat apples, peaches, and pears be- 
es 



64 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

cause they are not simply fruit. He who wishes 
to enjoy fruit must partake of some particular 
kind. So the only religion that most men know 
is that which comes to them in the shape of some 
great historical movement. In the western 
world our concern is with Judaism and Christi- 
anity. The two really form one organic de- 
velopment, and we have now to ask what is the 
highest they have reached? What is Christi- 
anity at its best? 

Fortunately, we have a definite and authori- 
tative answer. When Jesus was asked for a 
concise statement of what lay at the heart of 
the religion of his people, he was able to ex- 
press his highest thought and deepest spiritual 
perception in two quotations from the Old Tes- 
tament: ^^Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
with all thy mind,'^ and ^^Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself." The seed which the 
Great Sower cast into the world was not a new 
creation, but the fruit of Israel's spiritual life. 
The answer which he gave had been prepared 
before him and awaited the use he made of it. 
Christianity at its best is love to God and man, 
and this statement of Jesus is confirmed not 
only by many other sayings in the New Testa- 
ment but also by its whole spirit and by char- 
acteristically Christian lives in all ages. Its 
essential nature comes out when we attempt to 
discover the relation of the spirit of the Gospels 



AS LOVE TO GOD 65 

and Epistles to the spirit of Emerson ^s essays. 
The comparison is most instructive. 

Emerson's great word is truth. A passion- 
ate longing for sincerity breathes through all 
his pages. Now the spirit of truth is, as the 
New Testament expressly tells us, the Holy 
Spirit. Emerson is one of its incarnations and 
no one can associate with him without receiving 
it. From him as a radiating center the con- 
tagion spreads evermore. Yet still greater 
heights are possible. To find and keep our 
places in the divine order, it is not enough to 
be true. The heart must glow with love. Ill 
will is as destructive of the highest as is insin- 
cerity. The Holy Spirit is that which speaks 
the truth in love. 

Essential Christianity is thus higher than 
Emersonian religion, for it teaches that con- 
scious union with the divine is conditioned upon 
love as well as truth, that it is enjoyed by those 
who overcome evil with good and who, regard- 
less of the treatment they receive, remain free 
from hate and live in steadfast good will. In 
this the Synoptics, the Fourth Gospel and the 
Epistles agree. Eeligion is a spirit in which 
we live, its characteristics being ^4ove, joy, 
peace, good temper, kindliness, generosity, fidel- 
ity, gentleness, self-control." To *^walk in the 
Spirit" or ^4ive in the Spirit" is to deliberately 
maintain this attitude which is transmitted 
from person to person. The disciples, some of 



66 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

them at least, catch it from Jesus, others from 
them and so on to us. There is thus an apos- 
tolix5 succession of the spirit. Those who have 
it are the way, the truth, and the life to those 
who have it not. As torch is lighted by torch, 
so is the Christian spiritual attitude trans- 
mitted from generation to generation, from life 
to life. 

The beauty and applicability of the truth that 
lies at the heart of Christianity are obscured 
for us by several veils which, fortunately, are 
removable. In the first place, it appeals to us 
only on our noblest side. The natural man, who 
comes first in the order of development, does 
not easily believe that idealism is a practical 
creed and is afraid to trust anything but the 
cruder forces. He knows that force and fear 
and greed move men, but is sceptical when told 
that ^^ hearts are overcome not by arms, but by 
love and generosity.^' We are also troubled 
by the fact that the New Testament dates from 
a pre-scientific age, and the truths discerned by 
the spiritual genius of prophets and seers are 
presented in a literature which also contains ac- 
counts of miraculous occurrences and obsolete 
views of the universe. Furthermore, we are so 
accustomed to formal, technical and abstract 
statements of our rapidly growing knowledge 
that it requires some historic sense, some effort 
of the imagination, to appreciate the fact that 
the quaint, archaic, Oriental sayings of the New 



AS LOVE TO GOD 67 

Testament are unscientific, or rather pre-scien- 
tific, expressions of truth which may easily be 
restated in more precise, scientific form. 

For instance, it is said that God is love, and 
every one that loves is born of God and knows 
God. The same writing contains the statement 
that God is light, and that we have fellowship 
with him when we walk in light and practise 
the truth. It would be more natural for us to 
say simply that through love and truth the 
human spirit comes into harmonious and happy 
adjustment to the spiritual order. And as love 
is life-giving, so hatred is fatal. The false, the 
insincere, the capricious are misfits in the 
world; so also are they who nourish feelings 
of pride and contempt. There is no place in 
the divine order except for men of good will. 
No proposition in geometry is more demon- 
strable, no physical principle more readily veri- 
fiable, than the spiritual law that to be without 
love is to close the gates of life. Hatred ^^ pre- 
vents us from coming into living and filial con- 
tact with those forces of the world which give 
us growth, and free us from narrow ends and 
unf raternal ways. ' ' Of all things in the world, 
hatred is that which we can least afford. On 
the other hand, to find the secret of truth and 
the secret of love is to * ^ open every door in life 
which faces the sun, and the clear sky, and the 
face of the infinite Life.'' 

In the Sermon on the Mount it is said, ^*If 



68 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, 
and there rememberest that thy brother hath 
aught against thee, leave there thy gift before 
the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to 
thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift/' 
In the light of the foregoing statement it is 
easy to see that this is not merely a recom- 
mendation: it is the statement of a spiritual 
law. What is meant is that when the heart is 
not right toward another, it has lost its right 
relation with the world of spiritual reality. 
Nothing can be achieved by remaining at the 
altar. Until love begins to flow, the currents of 
life will not circulate. It is useless to try to 
pray or to offer gifts. It avails nothing to sac- 
rifice all one's goods to feed the poor, or even 
to give one 's body to be burned. Without love, 
we are at cross purposes with the universe. 
* ' The thing of first importance is what we are, 
the second is what we do, and the third is what 
we say.'' 

It is a great day in our development when we 
perceive that these New Testament sayings, 
with which we have been familiar from our 
youth up, are statements, not merely of beauti- 
ful poetic ideas and ideals, but of the nature 
of things, when we find out for ourselves that 
ill will and untruth cut us off from that which 
quickens, inspires and illuminates life, that they 
unfit us for our highest functions, destroy the 
sympathy which is a condition of insight and 



AS LOVE TO GOD 69 

are in their nature suicidal. Baudelaire spoke 
truly : ^^ Hatred is a precious liquor, because it 
is made of our blood, our health, our sleep, and 
two thirds of our love.'^ In one of the few 
places where the New Testament states a spir- 
itual law with Emersonian conciseness (I John 
3:15), it is said that ^* Whosoever hateth his 
brother is a murderer. ' ' That is precisely true. 
Hatred is murder in the heart. It means from 
the first the destruction of the hated object. 
That is what it comes to unless it is inhibited 
by opposing motives such as prudential and 
moral considerations. If this emotion monop- 
olized the consciousness, it would proceed 
swiftly toward its natural goal. We know, too, 
that to think of an action and desire to perform 
it is really to begin it, for such thought is incipi- 
ent action. To brood over it is to practise it. 
And even though the tendencies do not find ex- 
pression beyond the limits of the body, the atti- 
tude is fatal to our higher interests, for, as the 
New Testament writer puts it, ^^ye know that 
no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.'' 
If the new teacher Emerson hoped for ever 
does appear, one who ' ^ shall follow so far those 
shining laws that he shall see them come full 
circle,'' it is doubtful whether his scientific 
training will enable him to give a more terse 
and exact statement of Christianity's magic 
secret of living than the precepts we already 
have : Love your enemies, overcome evil with 



70 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

good. Here is the law of all construction of the 
higher values. If we love only those who love 
us while we hate those who hate us, it is ob- 
vious that love cannot increase in the world. 
The only way it can grow in amount is through 
the transformation of enemies into friends, of 
haters into lovers, by love given even when it 
is not received. Those who not only praise this 
principle but live it are as lights on a hill which 
dissipate the surrounding darkness. The Holy 
Spirit, which is at the same time the spirit of 
man at his best and of God, is in them, and they 
in some degree illustrate the working of the law 
of the life and influence of the ideal Christ. 

The fact is that when our spiritual vision 
clears and we see for ourselves what Paul and 
the writer of the Fourth Gospel have tried to 
tell us, we are brought face to face with a tran- 
scendent faith which it requires supreme cour- 
age to accept, but from which, when the impli- 
cations of our deeper experiences are realized, 
there is absolutely no escape. We are the chil- 
dren of love. There is a *^law of the spirit of 
life ' ' of which Jesus may be the supreme though 
by no means solitary illustration. In countless 
other instances can we say that ^^the word was 
made flesh and dwelt among us.'' ^^ Grace and 
truth came by Jesus Christ.'' This is the way 
spiritual truth always comes, through human 
lives. Paul tells his disciples that they have re- 
ceived the truth as it is in Jesus, and we know 



AS LOVE TO GOD 71 

that while some truth can be learned from a 
book or taught by an intellect without feeling, 
in the sphere of the spiritual life the only influ- 
ential truth is that which is incarnate in some 
man or woman. The Holy Spirit ^^proceedeth 
from the Father and the Son/' This statement 
can be generalized. It does come from the 
Over-Soul, but it is usually through some son 
or daughter of the Highest. And when the 
Johannine Christ says, ^^I am the way, the truth, 
and the life,'' the experience behind the state- 
ment was not unique in human history. For 
although the mother may shrink from saying 
that she is all this to her young child, and 
though it may frighten her to realize it, the law 
nevertheless applies in her case. And in the 
other fundamental relations in life it is given 
us to be this to one another. We may be 
tempted to cry out, ^^Who is sufficient for these 
things, for a responsibility so great?" For if 
the world is helped upward by the ideals that 
come shining through people's lives, it is pulled 
downward and backward by those who are in- 
carnations of the opposite spirit. Conscious 
of the mixture of good and evil in us, we are as 
much appalled as inspired. The first realiza- 
tion of the fact that we are more than intelli- 
gent animals and that Christianity must be 
taken seriously, that we are spirits and have to 
do with living laws, is an experience as full of 
solemnity as of joy. Yet we must not shrink 



72 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

from taking Christianity at its best. We must 
identify ourselves with the highest in us, and 
although we know that we have this treasure in 
earthen vessels, the great truth that we do have 
it should be recognized with courage and thank- 
fulness. 

^^Thou shalt love/^ — ^this is the first and 
great commandment, and the insight of the 
finest men and women in all the intervening 
centuries has confirmed this declaration of the 
master of the religious life. We are to love 
God with all the heart, with all the soul, with all 
the strength and with the whole mind. When 
life glows with this passionate love of and 
yearning for ideal perfection, it becomes uni- 
fied and its discords pass into music. There 
come into it a new sense of ease and power and 
a new joy. It rises above the former level 
where being good consisted merely in not being 
bad. Duty is transformed into privilege, the 
law is fulfilled without any sense that life is re- 
strained, for the service of the ideal is perfect 
freedom. Paul cannot speak of the new ' ' way ' ' 
of life without the greatest enthusiasm. Breth- 
ren, says he, we are not slaves any longer, but 
children of the spirit. We are not even minor 
children, but have attained our majority. Good- 
ness is not repression, but the free and joyous 
expression of the higher nature, our true na- 
ture, our divine or Christ nature, which we 
have put on. 



AS LOVE TO GOD 73 

This means that so long as life is coldly true 
and conscientious, its adjustment to the uni- 
verse is incomplete. When it glows with high 
affections, it comes into more intimate and vital 
relations with the divine order. This is only 
what must be expected if the Christian teaching 
be true that love is at the heart of things. The 
solution of those difficulties which seem so great 
before we love is not thought out. It is lived 
out, the difficulties disappearing with the pas- 
sionate and joyous consecration of the soul to 
the highest. 

There are times during our spiritual imma- 
turity when we wish to obey the commandment 
to love God with the complete devotion of the 
whole nature, but we do not know how. But 
later we discover, to our astonishment and in- 
effable joy, that we have always loved God, even 
in the days when we were not sure that we be- 
lieved in him. We find that we cannot, in fact, 
love anything else. Before we come to our- 
selves, we do not distinguish between our wishes 
and our will, between what single passions tend 
toward and that which the whole man wants. 
Fractional parts of our nature seek this or that, 
but when the whole nature becomes clear as to 
its intent, when its constitutional longings are 
felt, it cries out: ^^0 God, thou hast made us 
for thyself and our hearts are restless till they 
rest in thee. '' Before a man reaches this point, 
he often gropes his way along many paths. Not 



74 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

knowing himself, the voice of his deeper self 
drowned by the clamor of passion, he misses the 
mark, and only after painful experiences is he 
disillusioned. But he finds at last that what he 
has sought so eagerly is but husks that do not 
satisfy. In time he comes to know that he is a 
theotropic animal, determined by his constitu- 
tion to be an incorrigible lover of the best. The 
deepest in him loves God, and when it at last 
hears and answers the call of the highest, it 
realizes that it is a child of the perfect, a native 
of the ideal world for which it is homesick for 
evermore. 

It is necessary at this point to make a quali- 
fication in order to avoid an injustice. The 
statement at the beginning of this chapter that 
Emerson fell short of the highest, of Christi- 
anity at its best, may, to some who have been 
helped by this pure and elevated spirit, seem 
unfair. They will call to mind golden sentences 
of his, such as the following: 

' ' There is no beautifier of complexion or form 
or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not 
pain around us. ' ' 

'^His heart was as great as the world, but 
there was no room in it to hold the memory of 
a wrong. '^ 

' ' Love would put a new face on this weary old 
world, in which we dwell as pagans and. ene- 
mies too long; and it would warm the heart to 



AS LOVE TO GOD 75 

see how fast the vain diplomacy of statesmen, 
the impotence of armies and navies and lines 
of defence would be superseded by this un- 
armed child. . . . An acceptance of the senti- 
ment of love throughout Christendom for a sea- 
son would bring the felon and the outcast to our 
side in tears, with the devotion of his faculties 
to our service. . . . This great, overgrown, 
dead Christendom of ours still keeps alive at 
least the name of a lover of mankind. But one 
day all men will be lovers ; and every calamity 
will be dissolved in the universal sunshine." 
^*Man the Reformer." 

** Everything that is called fashion and cour- 
tesy humbles itself before the cause and foun- 
tain of honor, creator of titles and dignities, 
namely, the heart of love. This is the royal 
blood. • . . This impoverishes the rich, suffer- 
ing no grandeur but its own. What is rich? 
Are you rich enough to help anybody? to succor 
the unfashionable and eccentric, rich enough to 
make this swarthy Italian with his few words 
of broken English, the lame pauper hunted by 
overseers from town to town, even the poor in- 
sane or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel 
the noble exception of your presence and your 
house, from the general bleakness and stoni- 
ness ; to make such feel that they were greeted 
with a voice which made them both remember 
and hope? ... Is not this to be rich? this only 
to be rightly rich ? " ^ * Manners. ' ' 



76 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

These passages show that Emerson was able 
to see the place of love in life and to praise it 
in sentences that read like scripture. The im- 
portant fact, however, is that neither the per- 
ception nor the eulogy can make the heart to 
glow. This power belongs only to those who 
are in the apostolic succession of the Christian 
spirit. For him as for the most of us, it was 
easier to be true than to be loving. If we refer 
not to particular passages in his essays but to 
the total influence of his writings, is it not just 
to say that what they inspire is rather a high 
courage and a passionate longing for sincerity 
and truth rather than the spirit that pervades 
the New Testament, that wrote the wonderful 
thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, the 
finest page perhaps in the religious literature 
of the world? 




CHAPTER VI 

AS LOVE TO MAN 

"And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself." 

OME of the early Christian writers 

speak of their religion as a form of 

wisdom. It is of heavenly origin and 

is in strong contrast at every point 

with the wisdom which is merely a successful 

way of finding satisfaction for the tendencies 

in the lower side of human nature. They say 

that man is a spirit in process of evolution and 

when he becomes sensitive and obedient to the 

demands of the moral and spiritual order, not 

only does his higher manhood, his true nature, 

come into fellowship with the divine, but his 

lower life falls into order when it is controlled 

and sanctified by the new spirit. This higher 

wisdom is not a theory, but a way of living, and 

those who have found it are easily recognized 

by their characteristic attitude. They are 

^^ first of all pure, then peaceable, forbearing, 

conciliatory, full of mercy and wholesome fruit, 

unambiguous, straightforward, and as peace- 

77 



78 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

makers they sow in peace and reap in righteous- 
ness." 

This designation of the Christian insight as 
Sophia is profoundly just. These early writers 
were also correct in speaking of the spiritual 
attitude they had gained as new and from above, 
for it is one of the greatest contributions ever 
made to the spiritual wealth of humanity, and 
it is one that most needs to be universally dif- 
fused by the international commerce of the 
spirit. This will be apparent if we can restate 
it in modern terms and in images that belong 
to our life. If we cannot do this, if we can 
express a truth in only one way and in words 
quoted from others, we betray the fact that we 
do not understand it, that we are second-hand 
,men talking about what lies beyond our experi- 
ence and is known to us only by report. 

The great secret, the magic key to the life 
of joy and serenity, of poise, peace and power, 
has been rediscovered over and over again in 
the Christian centuries. When a man ceases 
to make his frail, confined self the center of the 
universe, when he no longer estimates every- 
thing by what he may get out of it for himself, 
when he becomes a lover, first of all of God and 
directs his life towards the ideals he worships, 
and a lover, then, of his fellow-men whom he 
passionately desires to serve, he for the first 
time sees reality from the highest point of view ; 
new visions of truth open before him, and his 



AS LOVE TO MAN 79 

mind, his heart and his life have come into nor- 
mal relations with all that is. He discovers to 
his astonishment that the idealistic paradoxes 
work. The wisdom which is from below says, 
**Get all yon can.'' The wisdom from above 
declares that the structure of the universe and 
the nature of human nature are such that it is 
more blessed to give than to receive, that the 
way to live is to place the emphasis on the outgo 
rather than the income, and that the lower goods 
come by indirection to those who serve the 
higher interests, who, in ancient phrase, ^^seek 
first the kingdom of God and his righteous- 
ness.'' 

The central truth of Christianity, restated in 
the language of to-day, is that human welfare 
and happiness depend not alone on the adjust- 
ment of the body to the physical world, but 
also upon the establishment and maintenance 
of vital and harmonious relations of the higher 
human nature with the moral and spiritual uni- 
verse ; furthermore, the latter adjustment is ef- 
fected in part by keeping the commandments to 
refrain from evil and by living in the spirit of 
truth, but it is incomplete until all life is re- 
garded with sympathy, until the purpose is 
steadfastly constructive and the heart glows 
with good will. Those who take and keep this 
attitude in the practical relations of life realize 
at once that they have taken hold of the world 
by the right handle. Its value for conduct is 



80 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

to some extent appreciated, but what is not so 
generally appreciated is that love is as neces- 
sary to undistorted vision and clear thinking 
as it is to right action. 

This may not be true when we are dealing 
with inanimate things. To understand them, 
it is not necessary to love them. But in the 
case of human beings, love is a condition of 
vision. Far from being blind, it alone can see. 
What is blind is selfishness. The very first con- 
dition of insight into the truth of other lives is 
the desire and the power to see them as they 
are and not merely in relation to ourselves; it 
is to delight in them for their own sake, to be 
free from any desire to exploit them, to recog- 
nize that they have value for themselves and 
not merely because they may be of use to us. 
It was said in old time that the pure in heart 
see God. Certainly it is the loving in heart and 
they alone who see man, whose vision pene- 
trates to the inner truth of life and who attain 
to a just conception of human nature. An in- 
dispensable qualification for the successful stu- 
dent of human life, of education, politics, art, 
law, morals or religion is the keeping, in the 
spirit as well as in the letter, of the second great 
commandment, which has been so well restated 
by Kant: ** Always treat humanity, whether 
in yourself or another, as an end, and never 
merely as a means." 

The study of human life is the study of values 



AS LOVE TO MAN 81 

which cannot be understood unless they are felt ; 
it is the study of tendencies, strivings, purposes, 
loves and ideal aims, which cannot be under- 
stood unless they are shared. The perception 
of that which is precious in each life is insepara- 
ble from a love of it and a desire to assist it 
in realizing its high possibilities. Love and 
knowledge in this case go together. A cold, 
cynical or contemptuous spectator of human 
life sees only actions, deeds, imperfections, and 
since he takes no account of the inborn love of 
the best and striving toward ideal goals, he 
misses that which is essential, the very heart of 
reality. For nothing merely is, not even a crys- 
tal. Consider a box of rock candy. What you 
see is a mass of crystals, some large, others 
small, but all imperfect. In every one can be 
discerned what the forces of crystallization 
would produce under ideal conditions. Here 
they have been at work, but the crystals in their 
formation have interfered with one another, and 
not one is complete. Something like this is true 
of men and women, only in them the tendencies 
are more or less conscious. Their aspiring life 
is their essence. They are determined by their 
nature to seek for a higher, to the worship of 
ideal perfection, and to the effort to realize a 
best. They may or may not outwardly pray, 
but each one is a prayer. Men are tendencies 
toward ideals, approximate expressions of an 
ideal humanity. They are lovers of, because 



82 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

children of, the Perfect. An inborn love of 
truth and goodness, an invincible idealism, — 
this is what lies at the very heart of humanity. 
Those who perceive this are the only true ' ' real- 
ists,^' for their experience and their sympathy 
enable them to penetrate beneath the surface 
of human life to those upward tendencies which 
are the fundamental reality of human nature. 
Inanimate things may be successfully studied 
and profitably used without sentiment, but in 
human affairs sympathy is a condition of under- 
standing. It is necessary to love in order to 
know the truth about men, women and chil- 
dren, and the insight, the philosophy which un- 
derlies the Christian view of human nature, has 
well been called, love in thinking. 

In this exposition, I have sought to use the 
language of to-day, not because I hope to im- 
prove upon the venerable words of our sacred 
books, but for the reason that it is important to 
distinguish between the Christian principles 
and spirit and their first and most familiar 
form of expression. The Christian attitude 
of love is a way of living which works like 
magic. What is important is not forever to 
repeat the words in which it was first stated 
and taught to us, but to use it and to recognize 
its use in history and the contemporary world. 
There is a great deal of unrecognized religion, 
of Christianity that has not become self-con- 
scious, and a perception of this fact makes for 



AS LOVE TO MAN 83 

peace and spiritual unity among men. A tool 
is of little value to one who cannot use it. The 
Christian view of human nature, although it is 
the truest, is almost useless so long as it is only 
nominally accepted. Although love is the most 
potent force in the human world, mere eulogies 
of love are impotent. The natural man has a 
difficulty in perceiving spiritual truth, and when 
he gets a glimpse of it he is usually afraid to 
commit himself to it in action. It is therefore 
necessary to illustrate in a concrete way how 
the Christian idealism works. Whenever an 
incarnation of its spirit appears, it is seen to 
be irresistible. 

A famous example of its magical power is 
given in the eighth chapter of the Fourth Gos- 
pel. To him who comprehends its significance, 
the meaning of Christianity as love to man 
stands revealed in the clearest light. Although 
the story is out of place in its present position, 
it is obviously a fragment of the primitive tra- 
dition. Some of the leading religious men in 
Jerusalem had detected a woman in adultery, 
and they decided to use the case to try an ex- 
periment upon Christ. The page in ^^Ecce 
Homo" in which Prof. J. E. Seeley paraphrases 
the gospel account is one of the finest '^ etch- 
ings'^ in literature, and the spirit of the scene 
is so vividly portrayed that I will transcribe it 
entire : 

They brought the culprit before the master 



84 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

and asked whether he agreed with Moses as to 
what ought to be done with her. ^^A judgment 
he gave them, but quite different, both in mat- 
ter and manner, from what they had expected. 
In thinking of the ^case' they had forgotten the 
woman, they had forgotten even the deed. 
What became of the criminal appeared to them 
wholly unimportant ; towards her crime or her 
character they had no feeling whatever, not 
even hatred, still less pity or sympathetic 
shame. If they had been asked about her, they 
might probably have answered, with Mephis- 
topheles, 'She is not the first'; nor would they 
have thought their answer fiendish, only prac- 
tical and business-like. Perhaps they might on 
reflection have admitted that their frame of 
mind was not strictly moral, not quite what it 
should be, that it would have been better if, be- 
sides considering the legal and religious ques- 
tions involved, they could have found leisure 
for some shame at the scandal and some hatred 
for the sinner. But they would have argued 
that such strict propriety is not possible in this 
world, that we have too much on our hands to 
think of these niceties, that the man who makes 
leisure for such refinements will find his work 
in arrears at the end of the day, and probably 
also that he is doing injustice to his family and 
those dependent upon him." 

' ' This they might fluently and plausibly have 
urged. But the judgment of Christ was upon 



AS LOVE TO MAN 85 

them, making all things seem new, and shining 
like the lightning from the one end of heaven 
to the other. He was standing, it would seem, 
in the centre of a circle, when the crime was 
narrated how the adultery had been detected 
in the very act. The shame of the deed itself, 
and the brazen hardness of the prosecutors, the 
legality that had no justice and did not pretend 
to have mercy, the religious malice that could 
make its advantage out of the fall and ruin and 
ignominious death of a fellow-creature — all 
this was eagerly and rudely thrust before his 
mind at once. The effect upon him was such as 
might have been produced upon many since, but 
perhaps upon scarcely any man that ever lived 
before. He was seized with an intolerable 
sense of shame. He could not meet the eye of 
the crowd, or of the accusers, and perhaps at 
that moment least of all of the woman. Stand- 
ing as he did in the midst of an eager multitude 
that did not in the least appreciate his feelings, 
he could not escape. In burning embarrass- 
ment and confusion he stooped down so as to 
hide his face, and began writing with his finger 
on the ground. His tormentors continued their 
clamor, until he raised his head for a moment, 
and said, ' He that is without sin among you let 
him first cast a stone at her,' and then instantly 
returned to his former attitude. They had a 
glimpse perhaps of the glowing blush upon his 
face, and awoke suddenly with astonishment to 



86 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

a new sense of their condition and their con- 
duct. The older men naturally felt it first and 
slunk away; the younger followed their exam- 
ple. The crowd dissolved and left Christ alone 
with the woman. Not till then could he bear 
to stand upright; and when he had lifted him- 
self up, consistently with his principle, he dis- 
missed the woman, as having no commission to 
interfere with the office of the civil judge. But 
the mighty power of living purity had done its 
work. He had refused to judge a woman, but 
he had judged a whole crowd. He had awak- 
ened the slumbering conscience in many hard- 
ened hearts, given them a new delicacy, a new 
ideal, a new view and reading of the Mosaic 
law.'^ Pp. 115, 116. 

Here in the clear light and in strong contrast 
we have brought before us two types of men 
with their characteristic ways of regarding hu- 
manity. To the group around Jesus the woman 
was a thing, to him she was a personality. The 
former, being without love, were also without 
perception and could see nothing of value in her, 
and no reason why she should not be used 
merely as a means for their low ends. He had 
the insight which love gives and was able to de- 
tect and recognize the imprisoned soul. To the 
despised and abandoned around him he spoke 
in a voice which bade them ^^both remember and 
hope.'' The divine humanity in him perceived 
it in others and called it forth. Hatred and 



AS LOVE TO MAN 87 

contempt could not see what is open to the eyes 
of love, ''this hidden treasure, this concealed 
but incomparable value-personality." Some 
other stories have come down to us of the life- 
giving power of Jesus, his ^^ gracious, discern- 
ing, vitalizing recognition" of depressed and 
submerged personalities. 

Prof. John Wright Buckham has put it 
well: ^'It was characteristic of the spiritual 
insight of Jesus to say, not only, ^Thou ailest 
here, and here,' but ^here, and here, thou art 
rich with undreamed potency.' It was not, in 
his case, — as it has been with so many others 
who have had skill in finding men, — the mere 
keenness to see, ^This man or this woman can be 
useful to me, ' but the discernment that each had 
in him something of intrinsic worth to himself, 
to God, to the world, which should be brought 
from its hiding into the light of recognition and 
fruitfulness." ^^Personality and the Chris- 
tian Ideal," p. 163. And when the latent di- 
vine life is awakened, when the best self answers 
the call of the best self in others, the change is 
that described in the New Testament as being 
born of a new and higher and holier spirit. 
^^Like an unexpected sunburst, the opening of a 
new world of fair and friendly benignity, comes 
true recognition to an imprisoned and unrecog- 
nized soul. Unsunned flowers lift up their 
faces in the garden of the neglected heart at the 
touch of sympathetic recognition, and a sudden 



88 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

fragrance exhales from crushed and unused 
faculties.'' Ibid., 161. 

Love is therefore not merely a beautiful and 
desirable thing. It is an absolute necessity. 
Without it, we cannot even see the truth of the 
most important part of our environment, 
namely, other lives. It is a spiritual law that 
the Self must be loved both in the self and in 
others. I must avail myself once more of 
Buckham's power of expression: ^^To despise 
the true self, to treat his own personality as a 
thing to be thrown to the dogs of appetite and 
passion or sacrificed to sloth or despair, — ^that 
is a temptation that comes to all. Pride on the 
one hand, self-contempt on the other, reduce 
personality to impersonality by putting it into 
the scale of market values, — appraisal by com- 
parison, — something wholly foreign to its na- 
ture. Unless one respects his own personality, 
he certainly cannot respect that of others. 
Jesus recognized this when he said, Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself. The self-love 
which serves as a standard for true love to 
others can only be an unselfish love of the true 
self within." Ibid., 154. 

Christianity at its best, then, is love to God 
and love to man. That inborn love of God of 
which man becomes conscious when he *^ comes 
to himself, ' ' that native love of perfection, that 
worship which is the promise and potency of all 
spiritual progress, is the conscious working in 



AS LOVE TO MAN 89 

us of that power which has lifted life all the way 
from the beginning until now. '^Our innate 
yearning toward the higher is the movement of 
the Higher itself within us.'^ Man's visions of 
the better keep the world moving upward and 
onward. They act like a spiritual magnet. 
The uplifted ideal draws the race after it. On 
the other hand, the love of man is transforming 
the social world. The growing sense of the 
worth, the sacredness, of life is abolishing an- 
cient evils, slavery, prostitution, war, child 
labor, the exploitation of human lives for other 
ends. When reverence for personality becomes 
the great virtue, violation of it is felt to be the 
great sacrilege. ^^It is this that constitutes the 
hatefulness of slavery, the meanness of treach- 
ery, that makes the dastard motive of the liber- 
tine so damnable, and lurks as the secret poison 
in the meanest and most despicable acts that 
men do.'^ Christianity in its history has 
brought with it doctrines, ceremonies and or- 
ganizations, but the heart of it has always been 
these two loves which after all are but one love. 
Together they constitute the divine meaning of 
life. 



CHAPTER VII 

LIVING EPISTLES 




HRISTIANITY to be understood must 
be studied in the lives of the men and 
women it inspires. Books such as 
this may be of service to those who 
desire to comprehend it by making clear the 
distinction between that in it which abides and 
that which in time is done away, but the only 
effective ^introduction'' to Christianity is a 
Christian life. This is the key to the scriptures 
and the best commentary on sacred literature. 
To those who have been born of the new spirit 
and know in experience what its quality is, the 
Christian writings are an open book; for all 
others, they remain sealed. This is true, of 
course, of other religions. In the introduction 
to ^^Sadhana," Tagore says, *^The meaning of 
the living words that come out of the experi- 
ences of great hearts can never be exhausted by 
any one system of logical interpretation. They 
have to be endlessly explained by the commen- 
tary of individual lives. ... To me the verses 
of the Upanishads and the teachings of Buddha 
have ever been things of the spirit, and there- 

90 



LIVING EPISTLES 91 

fore endowed with boundless vital growth ; and 
I have used them, both in my own life and in 
my preaching, as being instinct with individual 
meaning for me, as for others, and awaiting for 
their confirmation, my own special testimony, 
which must have its value because of its indi- 
viduality. ' ^ 

The spirit of a religion is its own evidence, 
and they who are filled with it are its apostles. 
Thus David Livingstone was an Introduction 
to Christianity for the savages and barbarians 
of Central Africa. He was a message, a ^^ liv- 
ing epistle," which they could understand. He 
had no need to talk about kindness and good- 
ness, sympathy and service, for his spirit was 
superior to theirs and conquered their hearts. 
His rescuer. Sir Henry M. Stanley, remarked 
how Livingstone's influence spread by conta- 
gion among the natives and how he was himself 
affected. Although they did not talk about re- 
ligion, the result of their association was that 
^^ after a while he found himself looking at 
things as Livingstone did, and before he knew it 
he was a Christian." Although this spirit is 
difficult to describe, it is easily recognized when 
it has once been met with in other lives. Paul 
regarded its presence in him and his power to 
produce it in others as the all sufficient evidence 
of his having a commission from Christ. The 
significance of a passage in one of his letters to 
the Church at Corinth is clearly set forth by 



92 THE SYMPATHY OF KELIGIONS 

Eev. F. S. C. Wicks, as follows : ^ ^ The Apostle- 
ship of Paul was questioned. He was not of the 
Twelve. What warrant had he to speak as if 
divinely commissioned to spread the new gos- 
pel? Attempts were made to undermine the 
loyalty of his converts. In his answer, Paul 
submitted no proofs of h,is apostleship. He 
laid no claim to special appointment by his Mas- 
ter. He advanced as proof what he had written 
in the hearts of the Corinthians. It was as if 
he said, ^Look into your own hearts. Do you 
jBnd that a great love has taken possession of 
you? Do you find a new spirit at work? Do 
you find that your sight has been cleared by a 
new truth? Do you find your lives yielding the 
peaceable fruits of justice, mercy, love ? If you 
do, you may be sure that the Divine Spirit has 
come to you through me.' '^ 

The progress of religious thought consists 
partly in the discovery that the highest experi- 
ences of the spiritual geniuses of the race were 
not unique. They are merely the greatest in- 
stances of a general law. What was true of 
them is in some measure true of us, and our 
religious life ought to be an experimental veri- 
fication of the principles of which they have 
been the chief historic illustrations. Every one 
who has caught the spirit of the Fourth Gospel 
wiU find that the author was trying to present 
something more than the Greek speculations 
of the day ; he will realize that in some humble 



LIVING EPISTLES 93 

measure he can say, must say, of himself some 
of the things which Christ as the great type, the 
great leader, is represented as saying of him- 
self. The great idea is, — the more humanity 
the more God, and the more divinity the more 
truly human. When we put into words the im- 
plications of our moral and religious experi- 
ence, the lower nature is shocked by the seeming 
irreverence with which the higher human life is 
identified with the life of God. But when there 
is presented to us a life which is an incarnation 
of this divine spirit, the difficulty vanishes away. 
Lives like those of Samuel June Barrows and 
Alice Freeman Palmer, full of grace and truth, 
set our hearts in a glow. Their approximate 
realization of the highest ideals has irresistible 
attraction for that which is best in us, and the 
call of the divine without is answered by the 
latent divine within. The biography of those 
lives might each bear the sub-title — '^ A Eevela- 
tion of God in one of his American Children. ' ' 
The kind of message transmitted through 
these living epistles is well expressed in a trib- 
ute paid by Mr. Barrows to an ^^ Ideal of good- 
ness, sweetness, purity and tenderness beauti- 
fully and winningly embodied in the life of a 
beloved teacher. It was she who made goodness 
real and virtue lovely. Her character was one 
which was not only good enough for heaven, but, 
tried by a more exacting standard, was good 
enough for this world. By an unconscious and 



94 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

irresistible attraction, she drew us from the old 
dream world into the living present through the 
charm of her saintly womanhood. Here was a 
beautiful blending of veneration, spirituality 
and affection, in an actual, tangible, human 
being, in a woman who sung and spoke and 
smiled. Other characters might be mythic, but 
this was indisputably real. The Hebrew wor- 
thies whom we were taught to revere were all 
masculine. There was not a womanly figure 
among them to command our love and admira- 
tion. But the child mind and heart had other 
resources. It needed not to spell out letter by 
letter, the old Hebrew word; it could recognize 
the Word made flesh and dwelling among us. 
Here was a living exposition of that doctrine of 
the incarnation, whose genesis we can never find 
and, whose revelation we can never limit. ^' 

The change wrought in a human life when it 
comes to be dominated by the Christian spirit is 
described in the New Testament in various 
ways. It is a new birth, a putting off of the old 
nature and a putting on of the new, a death to 
former way of living and a resurrection to 
newness of life. The transformation is pro- 
found, although it is not always or necessarily 
sudden, and it may be described in more modern 
and familiar terms. It is a veritable revolution 
which takes place in a life when concern for the 
interests of the lower self is replaced by a love 
which reverses the direction of the life currents 



LIVING EPISTLES 95 

and no longer turns inward toward the self but 
goes out toward the highest interests which a 
human being can have at heart. Copernicus 
proved that the centre of the solar system is not 
the earth but the sun. So Jesus taught that 
we can neither see nor live our life aright so 
long as its centre is believed to be where to the 
natural man it seems to be. But when a man 
identifies himself with all that he loves when 
he loves God, with the ideal interests which 
keep him growing, the old discord and perplexi- 
ties cease and are replaced by peace and power. 
Pride vanishes and a sincere and beautiful hu- 
mility appears. Confession, which before was 
so difficult, now becomes easy and brings with 
it a purifying power. The nature of the change 
is made clear the moment we ask. Why was it 
once so hard to acknowledge faults? The an- 
swer can only be that it was because we then 
identified ourselves with the lower self, so that 
confession was really self-condemnation. But 
when the realization comes that impulses, appe- 
tites and passions are but the raw material of 
life which are to be organized and controlled by 
the higher, truer, diviner self, it is felt at once 
that the mistakes into which they lead us are 
overcome and in a sense made objective and 
foreign by the very act of confessing them. 

This has been very beautifully stated by 
Maeterlinck in his essay on *' Sincerity ^^: 

^^In this state, the idea no longer comes to us 



96 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

to hide a secret thought or a secret sentiment, 
no matter how vulgar or contemptible. They 
can no longer make us blush, seeing that, in 
owning them, we disown them, we separate them 
from ourselves, we prove that they no longer 
belong to us, no longer take part in our lives, 
no longer spring from the active, voluntary and 
personal side of our strength, but from the 
primitive, formless and enslaved being that af- 
fords us an entertainment as amusing as are 
all those in which we detect the play of the 
instinctive powers of nature. A movement of 
hatred, of selfishness, of silly vanity, of envy or 
disloyalty, when examined in the light of per- 
fect sincerity, becomes nothing more than an 
interesting and singular flower. This sincerity, 
like fire, purifies all that it embraces. It steril- 
izes the dangerous leaven and turns the great- 
est injustice into an object of curiosity as harm- 
less as a deadly poison in the glass case of a 
museum. Imagine Shylock capable of knowing 
and confessing his greed ; he would cease to be 
greedy, and his greed would change its shape 
and no longer be odious and hurtful. . . . The 
knowledge and admission of our faults and de- 
fects chemically precipitates their venom, which 
becomes no more than a salt, lying inactive at 
the bottom of the heart, whose innocent crystals 
we can study at leisure. ... It is not we but a 
stranger who now stands in the place where we 
committed a fault. The fault itself we have 



LIVING EPISTLES 97 

eliminated from our being. It no longer sullies 
any save him who hesitates to admit that it 
sullies us no longer. It has nothing more in 
common with our real life." 

The Christian is therefore a lover of that 
which is above and beyond him. This love sets 
him free from selfishness and makes it possible 
for him to see truth and beauty and to work ef- 
fectively in the human world. So long as think- 
ing cannot for a moment lose sight of profit 
and loss and seek truth for its own sake, it fails 
of the highest. So long as we are primarily 
interested in our own advantage, and in the sat- 
isfaction of our passions, our perceptions are 
in slavery, and there is no aesthetic enjoyment, 
no art, possible. To selfishness the only beauty 
is that defined by Stendhal as une promesse 
de bonheur, that is, that which promises the 
satisfaction of all those desires which are other 
and lower than the love of beauty. The gospel 
then states a great law of the spiritual world in 
saying that the man who is intent on saving his 
life is the man that loses it. Although given 
clear statement centuries ago and illustrated in 
thousands of lives, this truth is not universally 
understood and accepted and in certain quar- 
ters it is even categorically denied. It is re- 
markable that the most celebrated of recent 
efforts to give an account of human thinking 
places its point of reference in the self. It says 
that 



98 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

**To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts 
of an object, we need only consider what con- 
ceivable effects of a practical kind the object 
may involve — ^what sensations we are to expect 
from it and what reactions we must prepare. 
Our conception of these effects, whether imme- 
diate or remote, is then for us our whole con- 
ception of the object so far as that object has 
positive significance at all.'' In other words, 
we are rational only when we look at the world 
as a lumber magnate looks at the California Big 
Trees or as the lion looks at a gazelle. In the 
one case the object means profit, in the other it 
means meat. 

The nation that adopts such principles will 
condemn itself to scientific and artistic medioc- 
rity; it will find philosophy but boredom, and 
will be unable to produce heroic lives. For- 
getfulness of self in devotion to high interests 
is a condition of great work. We have seen 
that love must have a place in the theory of 
knowledge, since its absence destroys the power 
of seeing things as they are. Hatred is an 
absolute disqualification. It has an eye for de- 
fects, but not for excellences. Are you uncer- 
tain whether you love or hate another? Ob- 
serve whether you are inclined to pick out his 
defects or his good qualities. No cynic can be 
a great artist or philosopher. A German 
scholar restates the maxim of Jesus as follows : 
** We see that disinterestedness, self-abnegation, 



LIVING EPISTLES 99 

just as it leads to beauty, leads also to truth, 
and that no one can preach selfishness without 
at the same time attacking truth and science." 

In ^^The Man of Genius," Mr. H. Tuerck 
shows that Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Spinoza 
have all rediscovered the fact that the secret of 
normal and happy living is to be found in the 
outgoing of the heart and mind in a love of truth 
and beauty, of man and God. They agree that 
love is the secret of all genius. Said Goethe, — 
^^The first and last thing that is demanded of 
genius is love of truth. ' ' According to Spinoza, 
^^Disinterested absorption in the contemplation 
of the object is identical with love for the ob- 
ject. . . . Love is joy with the accompanying 
idea of the external cause ; it is the will which is 
directed to the existence of another, selfishness 
is the will whose only aim is one's own existence. 
We do not love an object because it is beautiful ; 
it appears to us beautiful because we love it." 
So Schopenhauer: ^^He only is great who in 
his work, whether it is practical or theoretical, 
seeks not his own concerns, but pursues an ob- 
jective end alone." He is absolutely right in 
this and merely paraphrases the gospel in say- 
ing that genius is the most complete objectivity 
of mind, for this is still will, only it is a good 
will. 

In the light of this principle, it is interesting 
to reread history and observe how often the 
lives of the greatest men illustrate the insight of 



100 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

Jesus that the way to live is to seek first the 
supreme values while forgetting self, to go to 
the uttermost with the constructive good will, 
to seek first God's kingdom and his righteous- 
ness. All great men in fact do this. Some- 
times they end on crosses, but more and more 
often in places of responsibility. No man can 
be trusted until he is ruled by this spirit. We 
are beginning to realize the truth of these words 
of Sir Henry Jones: ^'It is a dangerous ex- 
periment to lay the world at the feet of the 
natural man; it is safe at the feet of the spir- 
itual. Let a man devote and dedicate his pas- 
sions, his intellect, his will, his very self, identi- 
fying himself with the good that is working in 
the world — and especially the good of the weak 
and humble — he may then affirm himself, or 
rather the God that is with him and within him, 
to the uttermost. ' ' 

This is only saying that love to God and love 
to man bring about the perfect orientation of 
the soul in the spiritual world and fit men for 
leadership in society. He who is not concerned 
for his lower self, who forgets it in his devotion 
to the highest interests, can neither be seduced 
by bribes nor coerced by threats and fears. 
The great leaders are those who are unhampered 
by petty, egoistic desires and anxieties, who see 
what is best and strive for it with energy and 
boldness. When we see that the interests they 
have at heart are the high interests that are 



LIVING EPISTLES 101 

common to us all, we feel inclined to trust them 
and extend their power. As Tuerck says, — 
^^To the altruistic, disinterested man power is 
given sooner or later ; he is the free man and his 
authority is gladly acknowledged. The selfish 
man sooner or later suffers shipwreck, his au- 
thority is borne only with resentment, and the 
moment occasion offers, his tyranny is broken; 
he is the real slave, and only so long as he is 
able to rely on rude force is he apparently free. 
. . . The man who attains to disinterestedness 
acquires at the same time sovereignty, power, 
and freedom ; for the selfish man may be ruled 
by every one who knows how to work on his pas- 
sions and desires ; but the disinterested man is 
not to be influenced, for he neither fears nor 
hopes anything for himself. . . . Oall up then 
all your energy, all your vital power, and direct 
them solely and exclusively to your work, re- 
main indifferent to whatever is unconnected 
with your work of love, and has reference only 
to your finite and perishable self, then will life 
emanate from you, you will be life-inspiring, 
like unto God.^' 



PAET in 
THE RELIGION OF GREECE 




CHAPTEE Vin 

THE RELIGION OF GREECE 

N the civilization of the West there 
are four factors of the first impor- 
tance, namely, a temperate climate, a 
vigorous race, the Greek culture, and 
the Hebrew-Christian religion. Europe and 
North America are rich in natural resources, 
they enjoy a bracing climate and are favorably 
situated for commerce. These vast regions are 
peopled by a mixed race of immense energy and 
progressive spirit. Its vitality is so great that 
it overflows in sport, that is, in the overcoming 
of artificially created difficulties. The spiritual 
matrix of its life has been inherited from the 
two pre-eminently creative races of antiquity, 
the Jews and the Greeks. From the one has 
come the greater part of our religion, from the 
other we have received the fine arts, the noblest 
of philosophies and the beginnings of science. 
It is a marvellous combination. To a vigorous 
people, with the disposition to take life strenu- 
ously and feeling the capacity and the need of 
creating, there has come a great inspiring tra- 
dition, the creation of the two peoples distin- 

105 



106 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

guished above all others for their positive atti- 
tude toward their world, for their conviction 
that beauty and goodness were at the heart of it, 
and that man is the child of the highest. Is- 
rael's thought climbed and underwent purifica- 
tion for more than a thousand years, and the vi- 
sion of truth finally attained was won not for 
itself alone but for humanity. The message of 
Israel to the world is that God is love and light 
and in him is no darkness at all. I say *^of 
Israel,'' for Judaism and Christianity are one 
religion, one spiritual stream, one organic 
gtrowth. The founder of the latter was the 
product of the former, and when he was asked 
for his highest thought, his deepest insight and 
most fundamental principle, he was able to give 
an entirely adequate reply in two quotations 
from the Old Testament: Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and 
mind and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. 
It is true that Judaism and Christianity are in- 
stitutionally different and that in the last nine- 
teen centuries each has absorbed many alien ele- 
ments, but the fact remains that both are parts 
of one development and that when they are 
taken at the very highest, their spiritual mes- 
sages are much the same. For this reason an 
introduction such as this, which aims to go at 
once to the heart of the matter and to consider 
beginnings and details in the light of achieve- 



THE RELIGION OF GEEECE 107 

ments and principles, must treat Judaism and 
Christianity not separately, but together. 

The Christian world is a debtor to classic 
Greece not only for contributions to its spir- 
itual life through art, science and philosophy, 
but also, far more than we realize, for religious 
thought and religious inspiration. Christianity 
at its very beginning was transplanted to the 
world of Greek education and culture, and when 
it felt the need of a rational understanding and 
interpretation and statement of its message, the 
forms in which it sought to give clearness and 
precision to its thought were Greek. And when 
other nations were converted and in their time 
reached the age of reflection, they naturally 
tried to interpret their religion in Aristotelian 
terms, since it was Aristotle who had taught 
them to think. But if this were all, the subject 
would not be as important as it really is. For 
scholastic philosophy is largely neglected and 
ignored to-day and the earlier creeds are not 
very intelligible. The fact is that there is a 
great deal of unrecognized religion in the world 
and that a large part, more than is generally 
realized, of what is instructive and inspiring in 
our spiritual tradition is Greek. To recognize 
this is not only a delight; it is also most salu- 
tary. For educated Christendom is just now 
reaching the stage of development attained by 
the Greeks when of their noblest thoughts and 



108 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

highest aspirations they made a religion for. 
thinking men. Their achievement is ^^a posses- 
sion for all time^' and of incalculable service 
to our age. 

Where shall we find Greek religion at its 
best? Not where many would at first look for 
it, — in the Homeric poems. These are in reality 
secular writings, and, despite the fact that they 
tell of the gods, their motive was entertainment. 
The ^* Greek epic is aristocratic poetry, com- 
posed and sung for the delectation of princes 
and nobles by the recital of the heroic deeds and 
adventures of their kind in olden time, or of 
their own forefathers. '^ Later, this poetry be- 
came the foundation of education for the upper 
classes in Greek society and in this way exer- 
cised a very great influence on the ideals of the 
finest youth. But the actual religion of the 
masses was something far less elevated, less 
beautiful, and much more passionate, mystical 
and crude. There were certain elements in this 
popular religion of great value, and these have 
not been lost. But the great gods of Homer 
and Hesiod were poetic conceptions, and of this 
fact the Greeks themselves were well aware. 
The service renderd by the Hellenic poets to re- 
ligion was, indeed, in part the same as that per- 
formed for Israel and for humanity by the great 
prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries 
B. c. Even Pindar conceives of the go(Js as 



THE EELIGION OF GREECE 109 

*^iiot only powerful and beautiful, but consist- 
ently wise and good.'' 

For ^schylus and Sophocles, Zeus practi- 
cally becomes identical with the moral order of 
the world. In the tragedies of the former we 
have vivid dramatic presentations of the idea 
that the law of cause and effect holds in the 
moral world, that the wages of sin is suffering 
and death, and that the penalty of wrong-doing 
cannot be escaped. In the Eumenides he de- 
clares, — *^ Whosoever commits all manner of 
transgressions, and swerves from right, he per- 
force in time shall lower sail, when trouble has 
overtaken him, and his yard-arms are breaking. 
Then he calls in his trouble to those who heed 
him not, and strives in vain amid the surge. 
And God laughs at the man of fiery heart, who 
boasted that no evil should come nigh him, when 
he sees him worn with inextricable woes and 
ever failing to round the terrible promontory. 
And he perishes forever, unwept, unseen, wreck- 
ing his former bliss on the shores of justice." 

Sophocles, like JEschylus, remodels and puri- 
fies the grosser traditions and legends of the 
popular religion, and, while speaking the fa- 
miliar language and using the old images, really 
substitutes for the old content a high and beau- 
tiful moral faith. He has attained to the con- 
ception that the world is ruled by divine laws. 
His Antigone speaks of them as 



no THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

" The unwritten laws of God that know not change. 
They are not of to-day nor yesterday, 
But live forever, nor can man assign 
When first they sprang to being." 

They are inscribed in the hearts and consciences 
of men, and though they sometimes clash with 
human ordinances, they are invariably the 
strongest. We do not break them when we dis- 
regard them ; rather do they break us. Creon, 
who collides with them, realizes at last that ^4t 
is best to keep the laws established by heaven, 
even to the end of life.'^ 

The incurable defect of even the very best 
lectures, essays and books on great literature is 
that they cannot transmit its spirit. Nothing 
can take 'the place of long study of the great 
masterpieces themselves. Commentaries and 
criticisms may clear up obscurities and reveal 
new beauty and depth in works of genius for 
those who have read them, and introductions 
may serve by creating a desire to know at first 
hand the best that has been thought and felt 
and achieved in the world. But nothing can 
take the place of association and companion- 
ship with great minds and noble hearts. We 
feel this keenly when we lay down a volume of 
JSschylus or Sophocles, and it is vividly and 
profoundly realized as we read the glowing 
pages of Plato's dialogues, the literary expres- 
sion of Greek religion at its best. For these are 
religious writings par excellence. They are 



THE EELIGION OF GREECE 111 

ordinarily regarded as works on philosophy, 
and there is philosophy in them, but they are 
also expressions of the deepest moral feeling 
and the purest passion for perfection. These 
superlatives are used advisedly. No appreci- 
ative reader of Plato will feel that they are not 
justified. One has only to read a few pages of 
the Phcedo, the Phcedrus or the Repuhlic, to 
realize the truth of Jowett's remark that ^'un- 
der the marble exterior of Greek literature was 
a soul thrilling with spiritual emotion.'' 

Many misunderstandings are due to failure 
to remember that important words undergo im- 
portant changes of meaning. Philosophy to- 
day suggests to many certain highly technical 
researches and almost unintelligible theories 
about the nature of knowledge. Since Kant's 
time, we do not mean by the word what Plato 
and his greatest contemporaries and disciples 
meant by it. Greek philosophy was essentially 
an effort to answer the questions, ^^What is real 
and what is the relation of that reality to human 
life?" Professor Burnet is entirely right in 
saying that ^^to any one who has tried to live 
in sympathy with the Greek philosophers, the 
suggestion that they were intellectualists must 
seem ludicrous. On the contrary, Greek phi- 
losophy is based on the faith that reality is di- 
vine, and that the one thing needful is for the 
soul, which is akin to the divine, to enter into 
communion with it. It was in truth an effort 



112 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

to satisfy what we call the religious instinct. 
Ancient religion was a somewhat external thing, 
and made little appeal to this, except in the 
^ mysteries,^ and even the mysteries were apt to 
become external, and were peculiarly liable to 
corruption. We shall see again and again that 
philosophy sought to do for men what the mys- 
teries could do only in part, and that it there- 
fore includes most of what we should now call 
religion. Nor was this religion a quietist or 
purely contemplative one, at least in its best 
days. The mysteries had undertaken to regu- 
late men's lives, and philosophy had to do the 
same. Almost from the beginning it was re- 
garded as a life. It was no self-centred pur- 
suit of holiness either. The man who believed 
he had seen the vision of reality felt bound to 
communicate it, sometimes to a circle of dis- 
ciples, sometimes to the whole human race. 
The missionary spirit was strong from the first. 
The philosopher believed that it was only 
through the knowledge of reality that men could 
learn their own place in the world, and so fit 
themselves to be fellow-workers with God, and 
believing this he could not rest until he had 
spread the knowledge of it to others. The 
death of Socrates was that of a martyr, and 
4ntellectualism, ' if there is such a thing, can 
have no martyrs.'^ ** Greek Philosophy,^' Part 
I, p. 12. (Italics mine.) 

This is no isolated judgment. It may easily 



THE RELIGION OF GREECE 113 

be supported by the statements of a long list of 
intellectual, moral and spiritual leaders in all 
the Christian centuries. In one of the most 
satisfactory books of the last quarter of a cen- 
tury, **The Teachers of Emerson,'' the author, 
Dr. John S. Harrison, shows ^^the essentially 
Platonic quality of Emerson's thought. It is 
often held that his transcendentalism has its 
source in the philosophy of Germany, and that 
his mysticism is an inheritance from the sacred 
books of the East. But a careful study has con- 
vinced the author that Greek thought has been 
the most important factor in Emerson's intel- 
lectual development. Beneath the surface of 
his days and years there ran a spirit of philo- 
sophic inquiry which was fed by repeated read- 
ings in the old philosophers of Greece. From 
these sons of light he drank in large draughts 
of intellectual day." The proof is clear and 
leaves nothing to be said. Emerson marked the 
passages in his books which interested and 
helped him and when these are compared with 
passages in his own essays, ^^they appear as 
veritable sources of his thought." Further, 
Emerson had no technical interest in Platonism, 
but ^^used his books for their service to his 
spiritual needs," to help him to live in the 
spirit. Although his contact with the great 
master was chiefly indirect, through the Neo- 
Platonists, he nevertheless caught the spirit of 
the original. And he testifies that the reading 



114 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

of Plato himself gave him a noble and solemn 
joy. To Carlyle he writes: ^^I had it fully in 
my heart to write at large leisure in noble morn- 
ings, opened by prayer, or by readings of Plato 
or whomsoever else is dearest to the Morning 
Muse.'^ 

The fact is that Emerson was steeped in 
Plato, the Greek spoke to the New Englander 
soul to soul and through him to the modern 
world. It is impossible to discover how much 
the seer owes to the philosopher and it is largely 
unprofitable to inquire, for their message and 
their influence are practically one and the same. 
Emerson notes that Plato has been the feeding- 
ground of the noblest minds in the long cen- 
turies since he lived and taught : 

*^How many great men Nature is incessantly 
sending up out of night, to be his men. Pla- 
tonists! the Alexandrians, a constellation of 
genius; the Elizabethans not less; Sir Thomas 
More, Henry More, John Hales, John Smith, 
Lord Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Ealph Cudworth, 
Sydenham, Thomas Taylor. '' 

And Milton says of himself, — 

^^Thus from the laureat fraternity of poets, 
riper years and the ceaseless round of study led 
me to the shady spaces of philosophy, but chiefly 
to the divine volumes of Plato and his equal 
Xenophon. ' ^ 

Very interesting also is the frank testimony 
of Martineau to the inspiring influence of Plato 



THE EELIGION OF GEEECE 115 

on his own religious life. In one of his letters 
written while staying in Berlin, he says : 

*'I finished the Republic some time ago, and 
closed it with the melancholy feeling of a long 
leave-taking from the greatest and most delight- 
ful of all one's masters in philosophy. '' 

And in his ^^Plea for Biblical Studies and 
Something More,'' quoted by Dr. Drummond in 
the '^Life and Letters," Martineau makes the 
further acknowledgment: 

^'I well remember (perhaps it is only a per- 
sonal confession which I make) the half guilty 
feeling, with which in young and fervent days, 
I found myself surprised into passionate ad- 
miration of the story of Socrates, and taken 
captive by words that seemed to me of unspeak- 
able religious depth in Plato, or even in Cicero 
or Seneca. I accused myself of an unchristian 
perversity — a want of evangelical simplicity 
and humbleness — because often Greek and 
Eoman history stirred the tides within me more 
than the image of Galilean Apostles; because 
the struggle for Hellenic freedom appeared 
more sacred than the conquest of idolatrous 
Canaan, and Leonidas nobler than Gideon; be- 
cause, read what I might in favour of a general 
resurrection in the body, the Phcedo tempted 
me to hope rather for the immortality of the 
soul." 

The dialogues of Plato influence spiritual life 
because they express spiritual life. They stim- 



116 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

ulate the aspiring life, the noblest emotions of 
our nature, or, in Plato's own phrase, they cause 
*^the wing of the soul to grow/' Theodore 
Parker, in the following description of the effect 
of these ancient writings upon him, expressed 
what many feel : 

^^I am reading the Phcedrus. It was the 
first of Plato's own I ever read. Several years 
since, strolling about the library, I took down 
the volume which contained the Phcedrus. I 
read it in a night. I was appalled by the 
grandeur of the thought, by the beauty of the 
style. The noon of night passed before I could 
lay it down, and then sleep came not, for the 
procession of the gods, and the ideal flight of the 
soul, upborne on celestial wings not yet defiled 
by earthly stain, gazing upon the lofty counte- 
nance of truth — all this floated in my mind and 
kept off the drowsy god. I shall never forget 
that event in my life." 

It is obvious, then, that the Platonic writings 
belong to the literature of religious inspiration 
since they still have power to inspire. They 
contain noble thoughts which are a part of phi- 
losophy, but they are not the product of the in- 
tellect alone, and intellect alone cannot appre- 
ciate them. They are an expression of passion- 
ate longing for the higher values, and values are 
not known; they are felt. To the pure, cold 
intellect, if there could be such a thing, there 



THE RELIGION OF GREECE 117 

would be no values. It could recognize that 
some things are, other things have been, and 
something else will be. But nothing w^ould be 
good or bad, for there would be no interests at 
heart which might be promoted or injured. In 
Plato the whole man finds expression, — intel- 
lect, aesthetic feeling, moral passion and reli- 
gious aspiration, — and to be appreciated he 
must be read by the whole man. In him the re- 
ligion of Greece is seen at its best, partly because 
he is perhaps the finest and most perfectly de- 
veloped nature Greece produced, and partly be- 
cause his religion is not isolated, but is fulfilling 
its normal function in a complete life. He was 
like Jesus in that each was interested supremely, 
not in religion, or morality, or science, but in 
an abundant, harmonious, and complete life, in 
bringing human development to full term, in 
raising human life to its highest power. His 
language, like much of that of the New Testa- 
ment, is archaic; but if we have a first-hand 
even though elementary religious experience or 
knowledge of divine things, we have the key to 
the understanding of both. If we really know 
about a thing, we can recognize it under all the 
many diverse forms in which it may appear and 
we shall find in such recognition a delight. And 
as regards Plato, we have only to translate his 
thought into modern terms and drop what is 
local and transitory in him, to find not only the 



118 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

religion of Greece at its best, but something 
very like Christianity at its best and a close 
approximation to that pure and undefiled reli- 
gion which is the goal of the spiritual progress 
of our race. 




CHAPTER IX 

AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 

|REEK religion at its highest, as it has 
found expression in the Phcedo, Phce- 
drus, Symposium, Gorgias, Republic, 
TimcBUS, Philebus, and several other 
dialogues, may be concisely stated as follows: 
Reality is divine and the soul of man, his essen- 
tial nature, is akin to it. The feeling of this 
kinship lies at the heart of life and, though it is 
at first implicit and does not understand itself, 
it is really from the very beginning a love of 
truth and beauty. Man is, by his very constitu- 
tion, a seeker for the good. He often fails to 
perceive the true direction of his natural goal 
and so ^'misses the mark,'' but by his nature he 
is predetermined to the quest of the best. He 
is a thinker but, more fundamentally, and in 
virtue of this affinity of his nature for the high- 
est, he is a lover. There are for him two ^* path- 
ways to reality. ' ' A gifted man might conceiv- 
ably, Plato thinks, be so educated that his 
intellect would at last attain to a vision of the 
very truth of things, of the ^^Idea of the Good,'' 
that ultimate principle of which the universe is 

119 



120 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

the expression and with which human life, to 
achieve its highest possibilities, must come into 
accord. The other pathway by which the soul 
may ascend is that of love. Although we are 
at first unconscious of the fact, there is in love, 
even in its crude and half-animal beginnings, 
a principle of development in virtue of which it 
is capable of gradual purification and spiritual- 
ization until it finally becomes an adoring vision 
of the divine reality under the aspect of perfect 
and absolute beauty. 

This is no mere speculation with only an aca- 
demic or historical interest. The deepest and 
practically most important truth about human 
nature was revealed to the insight of Plato. He 
saw clearly that man is essentially a group of 
tendencies toward the divine, although it is 
usually late in his spiritual career before he 
realizes what is involved in his native affections 
and understands the religious significance of his 
love and upward striving. He cannot help lov- 
ing beautiful things, but he does not at first per- 
ceive that in and through them he is really wor- 
shipping the divine beauty of which they are 
imperfect expressions, and which is akin to his 
own nature. He has a passion for truth and is 
active in its pursuit, but this is because he is 
*^ driven onward by an impulse which is of iden- 
tical nature with the goal toward which he 
presses. '^ In many ways, Plato tries to make 
it clear that ^^the acquisition of moral and spir- 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 121 

itual truth is not a process of putting something 
into the mind ab extra, but the evolution of 
something involved in our own nature," or, as 
his pupil Aristotle concisely says, ^^the soul 
potentially is all that it can know." 

The Symposium. The only ideas that are 
easy for us to express in a definite and adequate 
way are either abstract or those that refer to 
material objects or elementary and familiar ex- 
periences. But when a new truth of life is in 
question, as when Jesus came with his message, 
it is necessary to use parables and figures of 
speech and to illustrate one aspect of the great 
idea at a time. And even though the speaker 
be a master of language and strain its resources 
to the utmost, those who see the truth for them- 
selves realize that he has indicated and sug- 
gested it rather than given it complete exposi- 
tion. In two famous pages of the Symposium, 
Plato has done his best to sketch the Pilgrim's 
Progress of the soul along the highway of love. 
Although twenty-three centuries separate us 
from him, we, the children of men who were 
barbarians in his time, are able, when we read 
his words, to detect his meaning, catch his spirit 
and understand the spiritual experience which 
he tried to express. This is his statement : 

^^But I will do my utmost to inform you, and 
do you follow if you can. For he who would 
proceed aright in this matter should begin in 
youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he 



122 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

be guided by Ms instructor aright, to love one 
such form only — out of that he should create 
fair thoughts ; and soon he will of himself per- 
ceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the 
beauty of another ; and then if -beauty of form 
in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he 
be not to recognize that the beauty in every 
form is one and the same ! And when he per- 
ceives this he will abate his violent love of the 
one, which he will despise and deem a small 
thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful 
forms; in the next stage he will consider that 
the beauty of the mind is more honorable than 
the beauty of the outward form. So that if a 
virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he 
will be content to love and tend him, and will 
search out and bring to birth thoughts which 
may improve the young, until he is compelled to 
contemplate and see the beauty of institutions 
and laws, and to understand that the beauty of 
them all is one family, and that personal beauty 
is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he 
will go on to the sciences, that he may see their 
beauty, being not like a servant in love with 
the beauty of one youth or man or institution, 
himself a slave mean and narrow-minded, but 
drawing towards and contemplating the vast 
sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble 
thoughts and notions in boundless love of wis- 
dom; until on that shore he grows and waxes 
strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 123 

of a single science, which is the science of beauty 
everywhere." 

What this is he proceeds to indicate, liot to 
describe, asking for the very best attention. 
^^He who has been thus far instructed in the 
things of love, and who has learned to see the 
beautiful in due order and succession, when he 
comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a 
nature of wondrous beauty.'' This is absolute 
and perfect and everlasting, what Emerson 
meant when he spoke of ''the uncontained and 
immortal beauty," that divine reality of which 
we catch a glimpse in every lovely thing on 
earth. He who from these perishing beauties 
*^ ascends under the influence of true love, and 
begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from 
the end. And the true order of going, or being 
led by another, to the things of love, is to begin 
from the beauties of earth and mount upwards 
for the sake of that other beauty, using these as 
steps only, and from one going on to two, and 
from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms 
to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair 
notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the 
notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows 
what the essence of beauty is. This," he con- 
tinues, '4s the life above all others which man 
should live, in the contemplation of beauty ab- 
solute ; a beauty which if you once beheld, you 
would see not to be after the measure of gold, 
and garments, and fair youths," a beauty the 



124 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

pursuit of which would redeem life from all 
that is vulgar and low and make it a converse 
with the divine. Pp. 210, 211. Jowett's trans- 
lation. 

That is to say, love through all stages of its 
development is one. Normally, it is in its be- 
ginnings an attraction for the physical and the 
personal, but it is capable of an ideal develop- 
ment, a progressive sublimation. The poet in 
his youth may be fascinated by a Beatrice and 
not be aware of the treasure that lies concealed 
in his affection; but, if it is not checked in its 
development, his love for the maiden will lead 
him at last to the Beatific Vision (Plato used 
the very words, Phcedrus 250 B). Personal 
affection is transmuted into worship, or in our 
phrase, love of man grows into love of God. 
Love is one. It is a process. Its ultimate pos- 
sibilities are not suspected at first. We may 
say of it what Browning says of life: ^^ Youth 
shows but half.^' Multitudes of husbands and 
wives have discovered this truth for themselves 
and their experience is the key to the meaning 
of these immortal pages from the Symposium. 
They thought they loved each other and were 
happy when they stood with clasped hands and 
took their marriage vows, and they were. But 
love had deeper depths and greater heights 
which they did not then suspect. They find to 
their wonder and delight that the ardent affec- 
tion that first united them grows more tender 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 125 

and sacred through many beautiful years, until 
at last their marriage appears as something 
sacramental, an avenue of divine grace. The 
clear perception of this truth is one of the 
things that make the great Greek thinkers so 
helpful to men of this time and of all time. 
They did not judge life processes by their be- 
ginnings, but by their entirety and especially 
by their outcome. 

We have only to translate Plato from the 
Greek into English and then restate his thought 
in the language of to-day and illustrate it with 
images that belong to our life to find that we 
have a true account of spiritual experience and 
growth. Our modern logic in explaining the 
relation of the individual and his class would 
say, e.g., that the statement ^'Socrates is a 
man" means that Socrates is one member of 
the group men, whereas Plato says it means 
that Socrates possesses humanity.^ 

The former view of this relation is, of course, 
the only one that has any use or value in physi- 
cal science, but the latter is perfectly natural 
and legitimate when we are considering the 
meaning of the aesthetic and moral life. The 
artist who tries to express ideals of beauty feels 
that he approaches reality in proportion as he 
succeeds; the thinker with a passion for truth 
instinctively identifies truth and reality, and 
they who hunger and thirst after righteousness 

I "Plato," by A. E. Taylor, 47. 



126 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

know that they draw near to the heart of things 
in proportion as they find it. We but use the 
natural language of the aesthetic and moral life 
when we say that all beauty is of one family. 
As our love of it develops and our taste becomes 
refined, we realize that our life, in one of its 
aspects, is an education in the appreciation of 
beauty. Its elementary forms, which make the 
strongest appeal to us in the days of our imma- 
turity, are as schoolmasters which lead us to 
the highest. All beautiful things, all noble 
lives, serve to introduce us to that which it is 
our joy and highest good to worship. They are 
approximations to the perfect which we are to 
use as stepping stones till we arrive at the con- 
templation of that divine reality in which they 
participate and whose presence in them makes 
them what they are. 

The divine possibilities of human nature were 
never more clearly seen or more adequately 
stated. Here is an independent vision of the 
truth that that is not first which is spiritual, 
but that which is natural. We confuse the two 
at first and identify the ideal with the sensible, 
but give life and love time and growth and we 
find that insight clears. The beginnings of life 
are not to be understood by themselves; they 
are to be interpreted in the light of what they 
may become. All our imperfect loves are, if 
our lives are developing aright, on their, way 
to worship, just as our mixed opinions are on 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 127 

their way to philosophy and truth. The disci- 
plined mind may hope through laborious study 
and the dialectical training sketched in the Re- 
public to ascend out of the cave and see the 
sun of reality. In the Symposium Plato has 
indicated the love way to the highest. The 
beauty which is finally revealed to the adoring 
vision is, of course, seen not by the senses, but 
by the mind. As the New Testament would say, 
it is * ' spiritually discerned. ' ^ And in the Phce- 
drus, Plato tells us that what is seen on the 
mount of vision is incommunicable and has 
never been worthily sung by any poet. 247 C. 

The The^tetus. The passion of reason, of 
our higher nature, with which Plato wrote this 
famous passage on the ideal course of love, 
glows on many of his pages. In the following 
from the Thecetetus, he not only explicitly de- 
clares that the true aim of human life is to be 
like God, but he has succeeded in making us feel 
his longing for that likeness. It is full of the 
spirit of prayer, and might be summarized thus : 
** Deliver us from converse with evil and from 
growth into its likeness," and ^^May the beauty 
of the Lord our God be upon us. " ^ ^ Evils, ' ' he 
says, ^^can never pass away; for there must 
always remain something which is antagonistic 
to good. Having no place among the gods in 
heaven, of necessity they hover around the mor- 
tal nature, and this earthly sphere. Where- 
fore we ought to fly away from earth to heaven 



128 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to be- 
come like God, as far as this is possible ; and to 
become like him is to become holy, just and 
wise. But, my friend, you cannot easily con- 
vince mankind that they should pursue virtue 
or avoid vice, not merely in order that a man 
may seem to be good, which is the reason given 
by the world, and in my judgment is only a 
repetition of an old wives ^ fable. Whereas, the 
truth is that God is never in any way un- 
righteous — he is perfect righteousness; and he 
of us who is the most righteous is most like him. 
Herein is seen the true cleverness of a man, and 
also his nothingness and want of manhood. 
For to know this is true wisdom and virtue, and 
ignorance of this is manifest folly and vice. 
All other kinds of wisdom or cleverness, which 
seem only, such as the wisdom of politicians, 
or the wisdom of the arts, are coarse and vul- 
gar. The unrighteous man, or the sayer or 
doer of unholy things, had far better not be en- 
couraged in the illusion that his roguery is 
clever; for men glory in their shame — ^they 
fancy that they hear others saying of them, 
^ These are not mere good-for-nothing persons, 
mere burdens of the earth, but such as men 
should be who mean to dwell safely in a state.' 
Let us tell them that they are all the more truly 
what they do not think they are because they do 
not know it; for they do not know the penalty 
of injustice, which above all things they ought 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 129 

to know — not stripes and death, as they sup- 
pose, which evil doers often escape, but a 
penalty which cannot be escaped. . . . There 
are two patterns eternally set before them; the 
one blessed and divine, the other godless and 
wretched ; but they do not see them, or perceive 
that in their utter folly and infatuation they 
are growing like the one and unlike the other by 
reason of their evil deeds; and the penalty is 
that they lead a life answering to the pattern 
which they are growing like." Not only will 
' ' the place of innocence not receive them after 
death," but ^^even here on earth they will live 
ever in the likeness of their own evil selves, and 
with evil friends." P. 176, Jowett's transla- 
tion. 

The Eepublic. The same ideas, ideals and 
spiritual longings find expression in the Re- 
public, which for men and women of a kindred 
spirit is in many respects the greatest book ever 
written. It is by no means the mere fantastic 
Utopia which some suppose it to be, but is really 
an attempt to answer the question which two 
young men put to Socrates at the beginning of 
the second book. They ask, What is justice or 
goodness? What is morality in itself? They 
want to know, not its accidental and extrinsic 
results, but its significance and value for the 
inner life of man. Socrates replies that no con- 
cise definition is possible, and that he can an- 
swer if at all only by showing what properly 



130 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

educated human nature might become in a state 
so arranged as to bring out its finest possibili- 
ties. Books H-Vn of the Republic give an out- 
line of an ideal education in an ideal state and 
the rise of the soul in such surroundings to the 
greatest height, while books VIII and IX give 
a picture of the reverse process of dissolution. 
*'The loveliest of lives'^ {Philehus, 61 E) is the 
result of progressive organization of the con- 
stituent elements of human nature, and its ruin 
is its gradual disorganization and disintegra- 
tion. 

Plato 's theory of education is based upon his 
conviction that man is an imitative creature, 
that he cannot help admiring something and 
that he inevitably becomes like what he admires. 
His first concern, therefore, is with the imagi- 
nation and admiration of children. The object 
of primary education is to produce love of the 
beautiful, to develop a high taste, to make the 
good seem natural and the bad seem, strange, 
and in youth this is to be supplemented by phi- 
losophy, the love of truth. ^^The ultimate ob- 
ject of both kinds of education is,'' as Nettle- 
ship truly says, ^^to present to the soul the good 
under various forms, for beauty is the good 
under a certain form, and so also is truth.'' 
The supreme purpose is to lead the soul to a 
vision of that Good of which everything good, 
everything true, and everything beautiful in the 
world is the reflexion," to recognize and ^^glo- 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 131 

rify this Good and enjoy it forever/' By what 
are the admirations of children chiefly guided? 
Plato answers by literature, music and art, by 
the drama and the first stories they hear. This 
being true, it follows that these influences should 
be purified of elements which might confuse the 
mind or mislead the heart. He first lays down 
two principles, namely, that God is good and the 
cause, not of all things, but of the good only, and 
that he is true and incapable of change or de- 
ceit. In accordance with these canons he would 
expurgate the literature of his people. Many 
of the Greek myths he considers blasphemous 
and immoral. Young people ought not to be 
expected to condemn in men what they excuse 
in the gods. ^^God is always,'' he says, ^^to be 
represented as he truly is, whatever be the sort 
of poetry, epic, lyric or tragic, in which the rep- 
resentation is given. . . . These are our princi- 
ples of theology. . . . God and the things of 
God are in every way perfect." Noble concep- 
tions of God are necessary in order that, ^^as 
far as men can be, the young may be true wor- 
shippers of the gods and like them J' 

The twentieth century reader, to whom Plato 
has been but a name, will, as he peruses these 
wonderful pages, be surprised at the nobility of 
his religious conceptions and the depth of his 
moral interests. The modernism of his plea 
is astonishing. It is this: The soul becomes, 
by a law of its being, like what it admires. A 



132 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

good God is therefore the deepest of all needs. 
But if you wish to teach the principles of the 
Sermon on the Mount and nourish the faith that 
God is light and love, you must not begin by 
telling children that God gave orders for ex- 
terminating wars in the times of the Judges in 
Israel. Reverence, to be ennobling, must be 
discriminating. It is painful to have to muti- 
late Homer and Hesiod, but there must be no 
flinching in this duty, since the supreme ques- 
tion is not, Plato says, whether these ancient 
story-tellers delight us, but whether we shall be 
good or bad. A great artist himself, a passion- 
ate lover of beauty, and living among the most 
glorious creations of Greek art, Plato explicitly 
puts the moral first and will tolerate nothing, 
however beautiful, whose influence is degrading. 
He even declares that physical exercises are not 
primarily for the training of the body, but for 
**the improvement of the soul." Rep., 410 C. 




CHAPTER X 

AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE (Continued) 

HE Eepublic. Christianity, as we have 
seen, teaches that the supreme human 
function, the highest duty, is to love. 
^^Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, 
with all thy heart and mind and soul and 
strength.'^ Substitute for God, ^Hhe Good,'^ 
and you have a statement with which Plato's 
teaching agrees. The end of the first education 
in literature and art, he explicitly states, ' ' ought 
to be the love of the beautiful/' Eep., 402 D. 
The higher education was to lead to the love and 
vision of the truth, and he would agree that to 
love the truth is greater than to know any par- 
ticular truth, for it is in fact the spirit of truth 
which leads to all truth. In many places Plato 
declares that the love of truth and beauty is an 
adoring recognition by the soul of a divine 
reality akin to itself in the world. This feeling 
of kinship with the highest and attraction to- 
ward it exists in human life from the beginning. 
Man is a child of the perfect, and with acute 
spiritual intelUgence Plato perceives that the 
great task of education is to make our higher 

133 



134 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

affections and longings explicit, self-conscious 
and dominant. The means he proposes are well 
adapted to achieve this end. He would keep the 
young in the presence of the best, and eliminate 
from the environment everything which sug- 
gests evil because it expresses evil and which 
might pervert taste and lead to bad habits and 
low standards. 

His own statement is as follows : 

^^But shall, our superintendence go no fur- 
ther, and are the poets only to be required by 
us to express the image of the good in their 
works, on pain, if they do anything else, of ex- 
pulsion from our State? Or is the same con- 
trol to be extended to other artists, and are they 
also to be prohibited from exhibiting the oppo- 
site forms of vice and intemperance and mean- 
ness and indecency in sculpture and building 
and the other creative arts ; and is he who can- 
not conform to this rule of ours to be prevented 
from practising his art in our State, lest the 
taste of our citizens be corrupted by him? We 
would not have our guardians grow up amid 
images of moral deformity, as in some noxious 
pasture, and there browse and feed upon many 
a baneful herb and flower day by day, little by 
little, until they silently gather a festering mass 
of corruption in their own soul. Let our artists 
rather be those who are gifted to discern the 
true nature of the beautiful and graceful ; then 
will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 135 

fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in 
everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair 
works, shall flow into the eye and ear like a 
health-giving breeze from a purer region, and 
insensibly draw the soul from the earliest years 
into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of 
reason. 

^^ There can be no nobler training than that, 
he replied. 

*^And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical 
training is a more potent instrument than any 
other, because rhythm and harmony find their 
way into the inward places of the soul, on which 
they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and mak- 
ing the soul of him who is rightly educated 
graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungrace- 
ful; and also because he who has received this 
true education of the inner being will most 
shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and 
nature, and with a true taste, while he praises 
and rejoices over and receives into his soul the 
good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly 
blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his 
youth, even before he is able to know the reason 
why; and when reason comes he will recognize 
and salute the friend with whom his education 
has made him long familiar.'^ Eep., 401. 

The great thought in this passage is that di- 
rectors of religious education should use litera- 
ture, music and fine art to introduce to young 
souls reason under the form of beauty. In the 



136 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

first of the two lines which I have italicized in 
this passage, the words which Jowett translates 
as ^^the beauty of reason ^^ and Bosanquet as 
*^the law of beauty'^ are in the Greek ^^the 
beautiful reason. ' ' Plato believed that it is our 
destiny to come into fellowship with the divine 
reason in the world, but that we make our ac- 
quaintance with it through art rather than 
through philosophy. We feel it as beauty be- 
fore we perceive it as truth, ^Hhe beautiful being 
the form in which the ideal comes nearest to the 
senses.'' The function of the artist is to show 
us the beauty which we cannot at first see for 
ourselves. As Browning's Fra Lippo Lippi 
says, — 

" We're made so that we love 
First when we see them painted, things we have passed 
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see ; 
And so they are better, painted-better to us, 
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that; 
God uses us to help each other so, 
Lending our minds out." 

Edward Caird puts it well : * ^ Art is for Plato 
the great means of presenting the higher under 
the form of the lower. . . . Art and poetry bring 
down the idea into the sensible world for those 
who cannot raise their minds above that world 
to the intelligible reality of which it is but a 
semblance." Plato's ideal of education is that 
although it begins with religion and goes on to 
science and philosophy, there is no break, but a 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 137 

real continuity, education being but a single 
process. Eeligion is implicitly rational, al- 
though it is not begun or developed by reason- 
ing. It is 'Hhe first grasp of the soul at truth," 
the intuitive perception of what will later be- 
come explicit and clear when the reflective pow- 
ers have developed, when we come to ^^know 
what we have believed." Plato was the first 
great theologian and he is still one of the best. 
He has seen and correctly stated the nature of 
human nature, the order of development of the 
human soul and its ideal goal which is likeness 
to God, fellowship with the divine. He knows 
that religion must grow into theology in the 
sense that man's aspiring life must become self- 
conscious and understand its self, but for him 
there is no schism between the life of aspiration 
and the life of thought since the divine reality, 
which the thinker seeks to know, is that which 
the worshipper adores. 

The Ph^do and the Ph^deus. The souPs 
kinship with the divine and its passionate long- 
ing to return to the ideal world from which it 
sprang is expressed with great clearness and 
beauty in two dialogues which may be consid- 
ered together, namely, the Phcedo and the 
Phcedrus. The latter is remarkable for its spir- 
itual insight, while the former is one of the 
greatest creations of literary art in all history. 
The story of the last day of Socrates^ life, as 
in prison and with his friends about Mm he 



138 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

naturally discusses the immortality of the soul, 
is told in such a way that the scene of sorrow- 
ful parting and of death is clothed in beauty, 
and the martyr of the philosophic life, as he 
leaves the world, draws all hearts after him. 
There are several ways to read this work. It 
may be subjected to critical examination as an 
exercise in logic, in which case it is fairly easy 
to show that some of the arguments are purely 
verbal and that others require modification be- 
fore they can be accepted as valid. Plato was 
very human, and his faith was stronger than the 
reasons with which he tried to support it. But 
the first time we read this precious human docu- 
ment, it should be not only with the logical 
powers alert but with the whole nature open to 
its appeal. It is well to read it through at 
once, allowing it to make its impression, and 
penetrating to its spirit and intention, lest we 
be ^^ike a myopic ant running over a building'' 
and getting no sense of its proportions and its 
design. 

It is extremely instructive to observe what 
Plato's argument assumes. He takes for 
granted the existence of moral and spiritual 
realities, ^^ truth, beauty, goodness, justice, holi- 
ness." What the objects of sense are to the 
senses these objects of aspiration are to the 
soul ; in the quaint language of the Phcedo they 
are in ^^the region of purity, and eternity, and 
immortality, and unchangeableness, which are 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 139 

the souVs kindred, and with them she ever lives, 
when she is by herself, and is not let or hin- 
dered.'^ The great difficulty with which the 
soul has to contend is the body and the distrac- 
tions of the Ufe of sense: '^this is the conclu- 
sion from all that we have said, that the soul 
is most like the divine and immortal and intel- 
lectual and uniform and indissoluble and un- 
changing, and the body, on the contrary, is most 
like the human and mortal and multiform and 
dissoluble and ever changing." 85 D and 86 B. 
The temper of the PTicedo is somewhat different 
from that of the Symposium. For the latter 
our imperfect loves are stages in the great de- 
veloping process of love, are stepping stones by 
which we rise. For the former they constitute 
a danger. The impulses, instincts, desires and 
pleasures connected with the physical life are 
liable to lead us astray, to distort our percep- 
tions of truth and act as a hindrance to spiritual 
longing and vision. The Phcedo is therefore 
ascetic in tone, the emphasis being placed, as 
Caird says, on the negative rather than the posi- 
tive relation of sensible experience to ideal per- 
fection. The body ^^half reveals and half con- 
ceals the soul within," but when Plato was writ- 
ing the Phcedo he was more impressed with the 
hindrance than the help, and, exaggerating the 
opposition, spoke of the body as the tomb of the 
soul. It was a passing mood and must not be 
taken too seriously, for Plato ^s teaching is cer- 



140 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

tainly not to be judged solely by those sentences 
in which he seems to say that in order to attain 
the ideal nothing more is necessary than to get 
away from the body and the life of sense. The 
explanation of the apparent contradiction with 
which he may be charged by those who do not 
read him comprehensively, but go over his pages 
with a microscope, is the fact that it is impossi- 
ble for even the greatest of teachers to present 
all aspects of a truth at once. In the endeavor 
to make one side of it clear, one is inevitably 
unjust for the time to other sides. All exposi- 
tion involves emphasis on what engages the at- 
tention, and the temporary neglect of other and 
perhaps equally important aspects of truth. 
And Martineau is therefore right in saying that 
^^ There is nothing inconsistent in this double 
view, which regards the material system, now 
as the opaque veil to hide, and now as the trans- 
parent medium to reveal, the inner thought 
which is the divine essence of all ; and seeks at 
one time to ascend into the intellectual glory by 
escape from detaining appearances ; at another, 
to descend with that glory as it streams into the 
remotest recesses of the phenomenal world. '^ 
In the Phcedo he presents the negative side of 
his doctrine, but in the Phcedrus and the Sym- 
posium there is set forth the positive side in 
which is found ^^a function for parts and ex- 
pressions of human nature that asceticism is 
most apt to persecute and suppress. . . . Love, 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 141 

in its various stages of impulse from the lowest 
to the highest, he recognizes as the sigh of the 
mortal after the immortal, the tendency of the 
finite back to the infinite, ' ' as that which in the 
end makes man the adoring and consecrated 
worshipper of intellectual, moral and spiritual 
truth and beauty. 

Thus Plato performs the supreme function of 
a great religious teacher. He interprets our 
common experience in such a way as to make 
clear that it has spiritual significance, and that 
there are sublime possibilities in human life 
and a divine meaning in the world. Scattered 
through his pages are many sentences which ex- 
press unsurpassed insight, and which are like 
the nuggets of divine wisdom that abound even 
in the less profitable portions of the Bible. De- 
spite the logical flaws in the Phmdo and its 
tendency to a view of the body which has been 
the cause of immeasurable evil in the world, 
it does effectively stimulate the higher long- 
ings and spiritual cravings of our nature. 
Plato here also speaks a word of advice which 
is widely and urgently needed to-day, as when 
he tells us that in these high matters the soul 
should ^Hrust in herself and her own pure ap- 
prehension of pure existence.'' 83 A. When 
our spiritual intuitions are in question, it is 
vain to look for evidence in physics or physi- 
ology. It is not thus that men have reached 
and maintained the faith that ^'the eternal God 



142 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

is our refuge and underneath are the everlast- 
ing arms/^ but they have come to it by the way 
of Emerson and the prophets that were before 
him: Trust thyself, thy best self, and you will 
find that ultimately your trust is in the Over- 
soul, in God. 

In the Phcedrus there is a beautiful myth, in 
which Plato says that he ^^ views the affections 
and actions of the soul, divine and human, and 
tries to ascertain the truth about them and also 
seeks to show that the madness of love is the 
greatest of heaven's blessings.'' As no para- 
phrase can give an idea of the wondrous beauty 
of the original, it is necessary to read at least 
the beginning in Plato's inimitable words: 

^^Of the nature of the soul, though her true 
form be ever a theme of large and more than 
mortal discourse, let me speak briefly, and in a 
figure. And let the figure be composite — a pair 
of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the 
winged horses and the charioteers of the gods 
are all of them noble and of noble descent, but 
those of other races are mixed; the human 
charioteer drives his in a pair ; and one of them 
is noble and of noble breed, and the other is 
ignoble and of ignoble breed; and the driving 
of them of necessity gives a great deal of trou- 
ble to him. I will endeavor to explain to you 
in what way the mortal differs from the immor- 
tal creature. The soul in her totality has the 
care of inanimate being everywhere, and trav- 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 143 

erses the whole heaven in divers forms ap- 
pearing; — when perfectly and fully winged she 
soars upward, and orders the whole world; 
whereas the imperfect soul, losing her wings 
and drooping in her flight at last settles on the 
solid ground — and there finding a home, she 
receives an earthly frame which appears to be 
self -moved, but is really moved by her power; 
and this composition of soul and body is called 
a mortal creature. ' ' 

Such a union is essentially temporary, and 
God cannot by any reasonable supposition be 
believed to have a body, whatever fancies may 
arise in our anthropomorphic imagination. 
The reason why the soul loses her wings is as 
follows: ^^The wing is the corporeal element 
which is most akin to the divine, and which by 
nature tends to soar aloft and carry that which 
gravitates downwards into the upper region, 
which is the habitation of the gods. The divine 
is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like; and 
by these the wing of the soul is nourished, and 
grows apace ; but when fed upon evil and foul- 
ness and the opposite of good, wastes and falls 
away. Zeus, the mighty lord, holding the reins 
of a winged chariot, leads the way in heaven, 
ordering all and taking care of all; and there 
follows him the array of gods and demi-gods, 
marshalled in eleven bands ; Hestia alone abides 
at home in the house of heaven ; of the rest they 
who are reckoned among the princely twelve 



144 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

march in their appointed order. They see 
many blessed sights in the inner heaven, and 
there are many ways to and fro, along which the 
blessed gods are passing, every one doing his 
own work ; he may follow who will and can, for 
jealousy has no place in the celestial choir. 
But when they go to banquet and festival, then 
they move up the steep to the top of the vault 
of heaven. The chariots of the gods in even 
poise, obeying the rein, glide rapidly; but the 
others labor, for the vicious steed goes heavily, 
weighing down the charioteer to the earth when 
his steed has not been thoroughly trained: — 
and this is the hour of agony and extremest 
conflict for the soul. For the immortals, when 
they are at the end of their course, go forth and 
stand upon the outside of heaven, and the revo- 
lution of the spheres carries them round, and 
they behold the things beyond. But of the 
heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly 
poet ever did or ever will sing worthily? It is 
such as I will describe ; for I must dare to speak 
the truth, when truth is my theme. There 
abides the very being with which true knowledge 
is concerned; the colorless, formless, intangible 
essence, visible only to mind, who is the pilot of 
the soul. The divine intelligence, being nur- 
tured upon mind and pure knowledge, and the 
intelligence of every soul which is capable of 
receiving the food proper to it, rejoices at be- 
holding reality, and once more gazing upon 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 145 

truth, is replenished and made glad, until the 
revolution of the worlds brings her round again 
to the same place. In the revolution she be- 
holds justice, and temperance, and knowledge 
absolute, not in the form of generation or of re- 
lation, which men call existence, but knowledge 
absolute in existence absolute; and beholding 
the other true existences in like manner, and 
feasting upon them, she passes down into the 
interior of the heavens and returns home; and 
there the charioteer putting up his horses at the 
stall gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to 
drink. 

**Such is the life of the gods; but of other 
souls, that which follows God best and is likest to 
him lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer 
world, and is carried round in the revolution, 
troubled indeed by the steeds, and with diffi- 
culty behold'ng true being; while another only 
rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see 
by reason of the unruliness of the steeds. The 
rest of the souls are also longing after the upper 
world and they all follow, but not being strong 
enough they are carried round below the sur- 
face, plunging, treading on one another, each 
striving to be first ; and there is confusion and 
perspiration and the extremity of effort; and 
many of them are lamed or have their wings 
broken through the ill-driving of the chariot- 
eers ; and all of them after a fruitless toil, not 
having attained to the mysteries of true being, 



146 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

go away and feed upon opinion. The reason 
why the souls exhibit this exceeding eagerness 
to behold the plain of truth is that pasturage is 
found there, which is suited to the higher part 
of the soul ; and the wing on which the soul soars 
is nourished with this. And there is a law of 
Destiny, that the soul which attains any vision 
of truth in company with a god is preserved 
from harm until the next period, and if attain- 
ing always is always unharmed. But when she 
is unable to follow, and fails to behold the truth, 
and through some ill-hap sinks beneath the 
double load of f orgetfulness and vice, her wings 
fall from her and she drops to the ground. ^^ 

The soul's state on earth depends upon the 
amount of truth it has seen. That which has 
had the highest visions will be incarnated in 
some philosopher, or artist, or some musical or 
loving nature. Such a soul has wings, its life is 
aspiration, all truth and beauty set it to longing 
for the perfect truth and beauty. In extreme 
cases, the soul becomes indifferent to earthly in- 
terests, is rapt in the divine, and is inspired 
though it may seen! mad. 

Plato then declares that ^^he who loves the 
beautiful loves it because he partakes of it/^ 
Emerson's way of saying it was, — *^I, the im- 
perfect, adore my own perfect." Jesus had the 
same truth in mind when he taught us that we 
are the children of the perfect. Plato says that 
the fact that we are men and have these aspiifa- 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 147 

tions is evidence of our heredity from the high- 
est: ** Every soul of man has in the way of 
nature beheld true being ; this was the condition 
of her passing into the form of man, for the 
soul that has never seen the truth will not pass 
into human form.'^ The difference between 
men is due to the fact that we are not all equally 
sensitive to the divine that shines through ^^this 
muddy vesture of decay.'' Some are corrupted 
by evil influences and ^^have lost the memory 
of the holy things which once they saw.'' Few 
retain an adequate remembrance, and with dif- 
ficulty as through a glass darkly do they discern 
the ideal in the actual world. 

In this way Plato has tried to bring home to 
his fellow men his conviction that the measure 
of our humanity is to be found in the nobility 
and strength of our aspirations, in the quality 
of our loves. We are human just so far as we 
are lovers of the divine. The Perfect is a spir- 
itual magnet that acts upon us incessantly. 
Every perception of the beautiful is like a mes- 
senger from heaven, and every new vision of 
truth strengthens the desire for more and makes 
the ^ ^ wing of the soul to grow. ' ' The key to the 
interpretation of this famous myth is not to be 
found in any learned commentary, but in the life 
of aspiration and the experience of the fact that 
our higher desires are increased by fulfilment, 
that the best in us grows by what it feeds upon. 
Certain impulses in our nature often throw our 



148 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

lives into disorder and are always difficult to 
control, but the diviner part is ^4ike a bird flut- 
tering and looking upward and trying to fly 
away/' A homing instinct of the soul causes 
it to seek ^Hhe plain of truth where its fitting 
pasturage is to be found/' truth and beauty 
being the bread of life to that which is best in 
us, the nourishment by which we are *^ re- 
plenished and made glad/' 

We are of one family with the gods and have 
some degree of likeness to them. The great dif- 
ference is that the horses of the gods are both 
white, i. e., their impulses are in accordance with 
reason, and they are always in the presence of 
the divine realities of which the human soul in 
rare moments has a fleeting vision, ^ ^ those things 
in which God abides, and in which abiding He 
is divine," or, more accurately translated, ^^the 
communion with which causes God to be divine." 
The divine is what we partly are and, when we 
are fully awake, what we wholly long to be. 
Truth and beauty and goodness, which make God 
divine, are that by which we grow like him. 
The moral nature of God, if we may use such an 
expression, was never more explicitly asserted 
than in the words, — '^But the divine is beauty^ 
wisdom, goodness, and all such qualities; by 
these the wings of the soul are nourished and 
grow, but by the opposite qualities, such as vile- 
ness and evil, they are wasted away and de- 
stroyed." Phcedrus, 2^6 'Ej. 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 149 

In order to realize how perfectly and purely 
the fundamental religious feeling of kinship 
with the highest and yearning for perfection is 
expressed in this passage from the Phcedrus, it 
is necessary to understand the net result of re- 
flection on this subject to the present. The phil- 
osophers who have the greatest reverence for 
the intellect agree that man is not a purely in- 
tellectual being. Love, e. g., may be guided by 
intelligence, but it wells up spontaneously 
within. It is entirely rational to recognize that 
love has its place in every normal life. The 
same is true of religious feeling. It comes from 
the same source as love and is like love in that 
no life is complete without it. Perhaps the 
statement of the late Friedrich Paulsen, Pro- 
fessor of Philosophy in the University of Berlin, 
is as concise and adequate as any yet made: 
^'Feelings of humility, reverence, yearnings 
after perfection, with which man's heart is in- 
spired by the contemplation of nature and his- 
tory, determine his attitude to reality more im- 
mediately and more profoundly than the con- 
cepts and formulae of science. Out of these 
feelings arises the trust that the world is not a 
meaningless play of blind forces, but the revela- 
tion of a good and great being whom he may ac- 
knowledge as akin to his own innermost essence. 
For in truth the real essence of every religious 
belief is the assurance that the true nature of 
reality reveals itself in that which I love and 



150 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

reverence as the highest and the best, it is the 
certainty that the good and the perfect, toward 
which the deepest yearning of my will is 
directed, forms the origin and goal of all 
things.'^ ^^Introduction to Philosophy, '^ Thil- 
ly^s translation, p. 8. 

From this statement, few if any competent 
scholars would dissent. But this essential re- 
ligion is the very substance and spirit of Platon- 
ism. The words which Plato has spoken in the 
dialogues we have been considering are spirit 
and life. These writings are not merely books 
about religion, but books of religion, and as 
such are still of the greatest value. Professor 
Paulsen's judgment is sound: ^^This teaching 
supplies the moral preacher with a wonderful 
weapon, which Plato himself handles with great 
force and skill, and we ought to make more 
extended use of his writings ; they would appeal 
more powerfully to our young men than the 
weak-kneed Cicero; the Republic is the very 
thing for young people whose thoughts are pre- 
occupied and confused with Nietzsche's t/ber- 
mensch. ^^ Ethics,'' p. 47. One of the intellec- 
tual surprises of history is that there were 
Nietzsches in the Greece of the fourth century 
B. c, and that their case was stated in the Re- 
public with a force and clearness which the 
greatest modern representative of their class 
has not surpassed. And so far as his gospel, 
which is a pessimistic and reactionary transval- 



AS LOVE OF THE DIVINE 151 

nation of all values, can be refuted by argument, 
it has been refuted by Plato for all time. But 
it is not so much an intellectual position, which 
may be attacked or defended, as an expression 
of feeling and will. And the defense against a 
seductive literary expression of bad feeling is 
life and literature dominated and permeated by 
a nobler spirit. Here Plato is of the greatest 
service, for the simple and often demonstrated 
fact is that companionship with him makes un- 
acceptable and even revolting the ideals and 
standards of Nietzsche and his kind. 



CHAPTER XI 



Plato's theism 




N the course of a thousand years the 
Elohim of early times and the tribal 
deity Jahveh, whose dwelling place 
was a mountain top in Arabia, came 
to be thought of as the God of righteousness 
and as such the God of the whole earth. It is 
a long way from Jephthah and Gideon to Isaiah 
and Jeremiah, from the conception of deity as 
a leader in tribal wars to Jeremiah's thought of 
him as dwelling in the pure mind and writing 
his law in the heart and planting in our nature 
an instinct for God, so that we have only to fol- 
low our deepest yearning to reach the highest. 
^^The God of the Old Testament" is a phrase 
without definite meaning. For it to have sig- 
nificance, we must know what part of the Old 
Testament, what stage of Israel's development 
is referred to. In like manner the conception 
of Zeus among the Greeks was completely trans- 
formed in the centuries between Homer and 
Plato. When the latter speaks of the head of 
Olympus in the second and third books of the 
Eepublic, it is in the language and spirit of 

152 



PLATO'S THEISM 153 

moral monotheism. So, too, the name God was 
used in Greek philosophy before Plato, as, e.g., 
by Heracleitos, but it signified chiefly an im- 
personal principle of explanation in physical 
speculations. The God of religion must be an 
object of worship and therefore personal or 
more than personal, and the clear conception of 
and belief in such a God was among the Greeks 
first attained and set forth by Plato. 

Much has been w^ritten upon Plato's theism 
which is obscure and confusing, because the con- 
clusions reached are based upon isolated pas- 
sages rather than upon a comprehension of the 
whole course and total sweep of his thought. 
There are those who say that his God cannot 
possibly be anything but the changeless and im- 
personal Good which, in his ideal theory, occu- 
pies the place which the conception of God 
would have in modern philosophy, and it is easy 
to cite numerous passages to support this view. 
We know that he believed the universe to be the 
expression of a single principle, or law, and he 
tells us that if we could ascend through the 
process of dialectic to a clear comprehension 
of this principle, we might from it deduce all 
science. And in the Phcedo he represents 
Socrates as saying that in his youth he was 
greatly interested in physical theories, but that 
eventually he realized that a mechanical expla- 
nation cannot fully satisfy. Mechanical causes 
he regarded as subsidiary, as conditions, and 



154 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

beyond these he sought a final cause, an intelli- 
gent purpose. The presupposition of both 
Plato and Aristotle is that everything expresses 
some good. Man is no exception. He is deter- 
mined by his nature to seek the good which is 
his natural goal. He is rational because he has 
ideals and strives to realize them. Life is rea- 
son in operation. Everything has some func- 
tion, some purpose, in the great whole. To un- 
derstand anything is to see what it is for, to 
know the good of it. To be intelligent is to 
know oneself, one's own work and do it. But 
the world as a whole moves to an end, there is 
a meaning in it, and we cannot ^^walk in the 
light, ' ' but must live by instinct and our higher 
affections till we find it. 

It is generally agreed to-day that teleology of 
a certain kind has been left behind in the ad- 
vance of thought. This is true. We can no 
longer suppose that all things were contrived 
by some artificer for human benefit. We also 
realize that we have no clear grasp of the un- 
ceasing purpose that through the ages runs. 
Our teleological schemes are all acknowledged 
failures ; but to conclude from this that the uni- 
verse is a purposeless material mechanism is 
altogether unjustified. Like Socrates, Plato, 
and Aristotle, we still seek a final cause, for we 
find in our hearts the religious conviction that 
the world is not irrational, is no chaos, but that 
behind the vast process or complex of processes 



PLATO'S THEISM 155 

which science studies there is either a national 
purpose or meaning, or, if not precisely what 
we mean by these words, then something that is 
more and higher and that we may legitimately 
call purpose, with the understanding that the 
word signifies too little rather than too much. 
Science, which describes natural processes and 
ascertains the sequence of events, has, of course, 
nothing to do with teleology, with the religious 
interpretation of the world. But science is only 
one of our interests, and it can neither prove 
nor disprove that with which it has nothing to 
do, which lies beyond its province. And it is 
just as possible and as rational for us as it was 
for Plato to rejoice in science and go with it 
as far as it goes, and at the same time to trust 
our intuition that ^^this world's no blot for us 
nor blank, but that it means intensely and means 
good." 

As we now come to close quarters with the 
question as to Plato's conception of God and 
seek to discover whether he definitely attributed 
personality to the Highest, it is well to indulge 
in some independent preliminary consideration 
of the subject, for the obvious reason that we 
shall understand better what Plato means when 
we know what we ourselves mean by our terms. 
Is it true, as some think, that he did not quite 
reach the idea of God as personal, and that the 
best thought of the present is leaving this idea 
behind? The net result of reflection on the 



156 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

subject seems to be as follows : Personality is 
the highest form of being that we know, the 
highest of which our experience enables ns to 
frame any conception, but it does not follow 
that it is the highest that there is. Both Plato 
and Aristotle believed that in the universe there 
are modes of being higher than human life and 
with their view many of the strongest and clear- 
est minds of all ages agree. There is no rea- 
son to suppose that spiritual evolution has 
reached its term or that the possibilities of 
growth are exhausted. And while our thoughts 
cannot go beyond our experience, it is perfectly 
rational to believe that there is something 
higher than our experience. When we think 
of God, the alternative is, as Spencer said, not 
between personality and something lower, but 
between personality and something higher. 
We are therefore justified in thinking and 
speaking of God as a personal life, as wisdom 
and love, provided we remember that these 
words are not descriptive, but are symbols 
which mean too little rather than too much. 

This outcome of reflective thought, of human 
effort through all the ages to the present time 
to know the truth about this great theme, is 
well stated in the following report of an actual 
conversation: *^ Speaking with one of the most 
religious men I know, I said to him, ^I want to 
put to you a question, and I want you to answer 
it without regard to any theories of your own ; 



PLATO'S THEISM 157 

I want you to come as near the raw material of 
experience as you possibly can. The question 
is this: Does the Divine, in your experience, 
approach you as personal? Does it come to you 
in the personal form? Do you feel in your 
intense religious moments as if there were an- 
other person in communication with you?' His 
answer was, *No. The nearest analogy that I 
can find is this. Suppose I were on a mountain, 
breathing the exhilarating air, bathed in the 
sunshine and the wondrous light, it would have 
a wonderful uplifting influence that would pene- 
trate body and spirit. Nobody could persuade 
me that it was not so ; I should have the proof 
in myself. Something like this is my highest 
religious experience. The divine is the atmos- 
phere of the soul, it is the light of my world, it 
is life-giving power to my spirit. I feel the 
uplift of the great assurances, and I grow cer- 
tain of the Eternal Good.' In further conver- 
sation I said to him: *Now that is your reli- 
gious experience. You know that it is the best 
thing in your life, and though it does not come 
to you in the personal form, when you reflect 
upon it and think it out, you would say, would 
you not, that the Divine Reality which lights 
and empowers and revivifies your spirit, and 
is to you the one source of strength, must con- 
tain in itself the equivalents, and much more 
than the equivalents, of what you call personal- 
ity!' He agreed that it was so. *So you can 



158 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

pray to your God, and have communion with 
Himr ^Certainly I can.' ^' ^^The Working 
Faith of a Liberal Theologian/' by Eev. T. R. 
Williams, p. 78. 

The result of reflective thought upon reli- 
gious experience is thus fairly summarized by 
this writer: ^^We need not hesitate to speak 
of a personal God, because we are giving to our 
God the highest term of our own being, and we 
know that this cannot be too much; it must be 
less than the truth. ... If He is not a person 
in the sense that we are persons. He is more 
than a person. Everything of value in per- 
sonality is there, and more. . . . The thought is 
not too high, it is only too low.'' lb., 82. 

Keeping in mind, then, the fact that the 
terms which thought must use in dealing with 
the highest themes are not precise, but are 
^^ thrown out," as Matthew Arnold said, at a 
reality which can be indicated but not described ; 
remembering also that the distinction between 
the personal and impersonal was not as sharply 
drawn in ancient Greece as in the modern world ; 
we may now answer the question what, in 
Plato's mind, was the relation of God to the 
Idea of the Good. The latter, he could not, as 
he expressly acknowledges, precisely define. It 
is at once the unattained goal of thought and 
of moral and spiritual striving. The Greek 
conception of life differed from the modern in 
its assumption that what is supremely impor- 



PLATO'S THEISM 159 

tant is, not a duty to be performed or a law to 
be obeyed, but a capacity to be developed, a pos- 
sibility to be realized. There is an end toward 
which we are determined, a good which we seek 
from the first without having any clear ideas 
about it. This good is the goal of our individ- 
ual life; but, since man's real, concrete life is 
social, it is also the natural goal of social effort. 
It is more than this; it is a principle of order 
in the cosmos which we may approximately em- 
body in the individual life and the social order, 
but which is never completely apprehended or 
expressed. The highest human life is to this 
Ideal Good what the best triangles we can draw 
on paper or blackboard are to the conceptually 
perfect triangles with which mathematics deals. 
We cannot but believe in this Good, it seemed to 
Plato, since thought leads to it, and to our moral 
and religious life it is what objects of sense are 
to the senses. It is the source of knowledge 
and the source of being, or, in modern phrase, 
it transcends the distinction between them, and 
of course it cannot be described in terms of the 
transcended parts. 

The Idea of the Good is, therefore, included 
in what we mean by God, and there are indica- 
tions that in Plato's mind the two conceptions 
tended to run together. In the Sophist, e.g., 
he declares that reality cannot be abstract and 
motionless and lifeless: ^^And, heavens, can 
we ever be made to believe that motion and life 



160 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

and soul and mind are not present with perfect 
being? Can we imagine that it neither lives 
nor thinks, and exists in awful unmeaningness 
an everlasting fixture?" 249 A. Neverthe- 
less, we must let the facts lead us and not let 
logic betray us. And the fact which the Phce- 
drus and the Timceus make perfectly plain is 
that for Plato *^God was a living soul and was 
good, while the Good was not a soul, but an 
Idea or Form." This is not the place for ar- 
gument, and I can Ijere only refer the reader 
for proof to Prof. John Burnet, who has beau- 
tifully cleared up the subject, ^' Greek Philoso- 
phy," I, 335 fip. There can be no doubt that 
while in the Phcedo Plato has considered a num- 
ber of arguments for the immortality of the 
soul, he himself believed that in the Phcedrus 
he had given a scientific demonstration both of 
this doctrine and of that of the existence of 
God. The Good is independent of God, since 
it is the pattern by which he fashions the world ; 
and truth and beauty and their family are the 
things ^Hhe communion with which causes God 
to he divine/^ Phcedrus, 246 E. 

If in the light of the Phcedrus we read the 
Timceus and Philehus, we shall not find Bur- 
net's words too strong — ^^we can hardly doubt 
that Plato was a monotheist." In the Timceus ^ 
Plato expressly states that he is giving his con- 
viction, that he believes his view to be some- 



PLATO'S THEISM 161 

thing like the truth. Scientific precision is 
impossible, and he therefore sets forth his 
meaning in a myth. *^The maker and father 
of this universe,'' he says, ^4s past finding out; 
and even if we found him to tell of him to all 
men would be impossible." The created world 
is a copy of the ideal world, and as nearly like 
it as God, ^Hhe best of causes," could make 
with the refractory materials at his disposal. 
He found the visible world ^* moving in an ir- 
regular and disorderly fashion," or, as Genesis 
says, *^ without form and void," and ^' out of 
the disorder he brought order." The motive 
of creation was the best : * ' Let me tell you why 
the creator made this world of g^eration. He 
was good, and the good can never have jealousy 
of anything. And being free from jealousy, he 
desired that all things should be as like himself 
as they could be." 28 E. Here is the clear 
and definite conception of God *'as a goodness 
which communicates itself . . , which by a ne- 
cessity of its nature goes beyond itself and 
manifests itself in the universe." E. Caird, 
*' Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philoso- 
phers," I, 245, 254. The Timceus presents a 
new reason for believing in the immortality of 
individual souls, a reason of which much is 
made to-day. What is created is essentially 
mortal, yet we may hope to live, because ^ ^ only 
an evil being would wish to imdo that which is 



162 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

harmonious and happy/ ^ and ^^to destroy what 
he has made is inconsistent with the goodness 
of God.'' 

With Plato's views should be compared the 
exalted and beautiful conception of God reached 
by his pupil and friend Aristotle. Neither the 
older nor the younger man attained what we 
set such store by, namely, a complete and har- 
monious system, but both had a clear vision of 
divine truth which the world can never afford 
to forget. Aristotle, in particular, although he 
could not put the two together or explain the 
relation between them, realized and taught both 
the immanence and transcendence of God. He 
saw that God is our ideal, and yet understood 
perfectly that this ideal is not merely subjec- 
tive and irrelevant, but natural and with a basis 
in the nature of things, in short, that there is 
ideality in the world, that life is tendency and 
that God is its goal. For him the world was 
no dead mechanism, but a vast hierarchy in 
which there was a constant conversion of mat- 
ter into form, a breaking of the primeval sub- 
stratum out into life, into higher and higher 
ideal formations. There was an upward striv- 
ing in all realms, becoming in man conscious 
aspiration toward the ideal; worship, adora- 
tion, longing for the perfect life being more 
and more the great factor in human progress. 
There is no ideal without a natural basis ajid 
everything natural is capable of ideal develop- 



PLATO'S THEISM 163 

ment. Even matter, he quaintly says, has a de- 
sire for God, who is therefore the goal of all 
the activity of the world. God is what nature 
potentially is, what nature forever desires to be. 
Nature is a realm of aspiration, of tendencies 
toward a divine ideal, and God acts upon it as 
the beloved moves the lover. 

This great idea is substantially true, and a 
fresh perception of it is one of the greatest 
needs of the religious life of the present age. 
For it is obvious that some of our theologians 
and philosophers of religion are really pre- 
Aristotelian ; they have lost sight of a truth 
clearly stated more than twenty-two hundred 
years ago, and are moving with surface cur- 
rents backward rather than with the onward 
tide of humanity's thought and life. It is as- 
tonishing to find thinkers giving the name of 
God to subhuman forms of being, to some crude 
world-urge, to some unconscious stream of 
tendency, to the cruder stages of the process 
which has produced human life and civilization. 
If there be, as these men assert, a blind, stupid, 
or wicked will at the heart of the world, we may 
contemplate it with interest or pity, but to call 
it God and worship it would be as irrational as 
it is degrading. Aristotle taught us once for 
all that worship of anything less than our high- 
est conception of the perfect is immoral. A 
nebula is more vast than a noble man ; neverthe- 
less the nebula-stage of development lies behind 



164 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

us, — innumerable millions of years behind, while 
the ideals which the finest human beings imper- 
fectly express represent stages in the advance 
of life which are still ahead of us. Being men, 
it is our business to live as men and perfect our 
own type. God and man are so far one that 
man in his highest experience has a fleeting 
realization of the divine life. These blessed mo- 
ments are those when we enjoy the beatific vision 
of a new truth. But while for mortals the win- 
dow is rarely opened through which we see into 
heaven, God abides in the light, or, in Aristotle's 
phrase, ^^God is always in that good state in 
which we sometimes are.'' In these moments 
of vision we have a taste of the divine life, and 
attain to that which is ^^ thought in the fullest 
sense and which deals with what is best in the 
fullest sense." 

No extended discussion of these famous say- 
ings is needed, for those who have had such 
experiences will easily understand the great 
page in book XII of the Metaphysics and the 
equally famous passage in the Ethics in which 
the Greek thinker states his conception of God ; 
those who have not can only read explanations 
and peruse commentaries in vain. Here, as in 
all these high matters, life is the key to the in- 
terpretation of the literature which expresses 
life. Those who have once felt the blessedness 
of a life of ever- widening intellectual horizons 
and deepening insight will read with under- 



PLATO ^S THEISM 165 

standing and joy the pages of these men, who 
are spiritual contemporaries of ours, even 
though they lived so long ago, and be strength- 
ened by them in the conviction that we draw 
nearer to God as we go on in our development, 
and that as worshippers our concern is not with 
physical vastness or cosmic energies, but with 
the ideals of perfection which are our natural 
goals. Aristotle makes it very plain also that 
our thirst for ideals is no perverse passion for 
abstractions. Our ideals are not aliens in the 
world ; rather are they its very life ; they spring 
out of our constitution, and a divine discontent 
prevents us from being satisfied with anything 
less. God is our goal and he is also in our 
longing for the goal. We are essentially a race 
of worshippers becoming like what we worship, 
and it is literally true of our life that it rests 
upon ideal foundations. 




CHAPTER XII 

THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD LIFE 

HE contribution of Greece to ^^The 
Symphony of Religions'^ is illumi- 
nated by Plato's conception of the 
good life. The reason of this is clear. 
Goodness is not purely an ethical conception ; it 
has also a religious significance. For while it 
is true that by a law of their being men tend to 
become like the God they worship, it is also true 
that changes in ethical conceptions and views 
of human nature work changes in theology. 
What is fundamental, e.g., in those Christian 
churches usually called liberal is their thought 
of man. Channing came preaching the dignity 
and worth of human nature, and as his view 
finds an ever wider acceptance and the belief in 
human corruption and helplessness passes away, 
we realize that the change is revolutionizing our 
thought of God. Doctrines and ideals that were 
supposed to have an unimportant connection 
with the belief in the depravity and infinite guilt 
of our race ard seen to have rested upon it, and 
now that it is decaying they are without real 
support. 

16(5 



THE GREEK CONCEPTION 167 

Ethical. Theory of the Republic. Plato's 
conception of the nature of human nature as 
akin to the divine and possessing a capacity for 
gradual transformation into the likeness of God 
has, as we have seen, been set forth in the 
Phcedo, the Phcedrus, the Thecetetus, and the 
Republic. His ideal of concrete human good- 
ness he has outlined in the Republic and the 
Philebus. His view has more than a historical 
significance. Indeed, as we read the pages in 
which he tells us what we might be, we realize 
that one of his greatest services to the age and 
the ages is through the conception he has given 
us of the good life. His ethical theory as 
stated in the Republic I have tried to summarize 
as follows: ^ ^'He regards the moral life as a 
problem in organization, which it essentially 
and normally is, and not as a fight, which badly 
born and unhappily situated natures find it to 
be for themselves, and which, generalizing from 
their own case, they suppose it must be for all. 
For Plato, the good life is the life that is set 
in order. There is a natural scale of values for 
all the many instincts, impulses, needs, tenden- 
cies, desires, and aspirations of human nature. 
None of these is bad when in its subordinate 
and proper place. All are good when function- 
ing normally in an organized life. The highest 
in man is reason, intelligence, together with the 

1 "The Relation of Plato to Our Age and to the Ages," Har- 
vard Theological Review^ Vol. VI, p. 108 S. 



168 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

corresponding desire to use this power. Next 
is a group of nobler emotions, for which in Eng- 
lish we have no adequate collective term. It in- 
cludes that which makes men worthily am- 
bitious, which gives them a sense of honor, and 
makes them capable of moral indignation at 
injustice and wrong. Lower still is a hetero- 
geneous mass of desires, all useful and indis- 
pensable, but difficult to control, and frequently 
strong enough to throw the whole nature into 
disorder. These are the raw materials of the 
moral life. Our supreme task is to organize 
them, not out of enmity to any, but from regard 
to all. The ideal is fulness of life through 
order. When the hierarchy of impulse has 
been established, and the life, so to speak, has 
been graded, the result is such happiness as is 
possible to our nature. It is health of soul. 
This is the answer to the great question which 
Glaucon and Adeimantus put to Socrates at the 
beginning of the Second Book of the Republic. 
We want to know, they say in substance, what 
the good life essentially is. Please do not tell 
us about the way it is rewarded in heaven or on 
earth. Suppose it did not pay in terms of ex- 
ternal prosperity, suppose even that it brought 
suffering, what is the good life in itself? The 
reply is that the good life is the life which, 
through education and citizenship in a well-or- 
dered state, is itself set in order, with the high- 
est and divinest in our nature in control and 



THE GREEK CONCEPTION 169 

everything else in its appropriate place. After 
sketching an ideal human career in which the 
soul rises to the greatest height, he outlines the 
reverse process of utter ruin through progres- 
sive disorganization." 

There is one passage in which Plato, con- 
cisely and with entire clearness and adequacy, 
sets forth his conception of the good life, and 
which I always want to quote in every ethical 
discussion. He says: 

^^In reality justice was such as we were de- 
scribing, being concerned, however, not with 
the outward man, but with the inward, which is 
the true self and concernment of man: for the 
just man does not permit the several elements 
within him to interfere with one another, or 
any of them to do the work of others; he sets 
in order his own inner life, and is his own mas- 
ter and his own law, and at peace with himself ; 
and when he has bound together the three prin- 
ciples within him, which may be compared to 
the higher, lower, and middle notes of the scale, 
and the intermediate intervals — ^when he has 
bound all these together, and is no longer many, 
but has become one entirely temperate and per- 
fectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act, 
if he has to act, whether in a matter of prop- 
erty, or in the treatment of the body, or in 
some affair of politics or private business ; al- 
ways thinking and calling that which preserves 
and co-operates with this harmonious condition, 



170 THE SYMPATHY OF EELiaiONS 

just and good action, and the knowledge which 
presides over it, wisdom, and that which at 
any time impairs this condition, he will call un- 
just action, and the opinion which presides over 
it ignorance." Republic, 443, D-E. 

Note here the apparently parenthetic but im- 
portant words, ^^the intermediate intervals.'' 
Plato knows that his statement is merely sche- 
matic, and that he has not given a complete list 
of the impulses in our nature which it is our life 
task to organize. We must, he says, find for 
each power, or *^part," of the soul its proper 
position in the structure of life. 

The social problem is practically the same. 
He knows that men differ, and that individual- 
ity implies organization. So he aims to utilize 
the fighting instinct, the artistic instinct, and 
the powers of the thinkers. His great problem 
is to prevent the waste of human resources, 
especially the highest. Corruptio optimi pes- 
sima. He strives for a form of social organiza- 
tion in which each member should render to 
society the particular service he could perform 
best. Each man would then have an organic 
place in human society. And as the danger to 
the individual moral life is from insubordinate 
impulse, so the structure of society is menaced 
by ^Hhe inorganic man.'' 

Observe how concrete and serviceable this 
conception of goodness is. Here is no abstract 
moral imperative, practically useless in our 



THE GREEK CONCEPTION 171 

ethical difficulties. Instead, Plato says, in sub- 
stance, that we must discover all interests, from 
the highest to the lowest, and provide for all. 
Some of them are troublesome and unattrac- 
tive, nevertheless each has its place, its func- 
tion. And all can come to expression together 
only by being organized. That which is good, 
then, means that which is good for one as a 
whole. Our parts and passions and ideals are 
members one of another, and the same is true of 
individual men and women in the perfect spir- 
itual community. When everything in man 
serves what is divine in him, when, to use 
Plato's words, one has made an order, a cosmos, 
of his inner life, when he has brought about ^ * a 
harmony in his body and a symphony in his 
soul,'' when he has ^'set his house in order" 
and has built ^^a city within," he is prepared 
to live. Moreover, we are told that the real 
self is this whole self and only this self is free. 
Bad is whatever violates this principle of unity 
and order, whatever tends to disorganization, 
whatever makes for something less than the 
maximum possible satisfaction of human nature 
by elevating to the supreme place some passion 
or impulse that should be subordinate and play 
its part lower down in the scale. 

This way of viewing the moral and social life 
is not antiquated. It is coming more and more 
into favor, and indeed it is indispensable to our 
highest development. The comprehending stu- 



172 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

dent of our time realizes that one of our most 
urgent needs is for a revised conception of 
goodness. Much Christian preaching repels 
young people for the reason, which usually 
neither they nor the preacher understand, that 
the sermon produces the impression that good- 
ness is a negative thing. Now what young peo- 
ple desire and are entirely right in desiring is, 
not less life, but more. What makes lawless 
action attractive to some of them is their idea 
that such action is freer and gives more scope to 
human powers, that it means larger, fuller life. 
The traditional conception is too narrow, too 
ascetic, too Pauline. For the great apostle the 
moral life was for all, as no doubt it was for 
him, not a problem in organization, but a fight 
between two parts of our nature, the flesh and 
the spirit ; and the ideal, as stated in the letter 
to the Eomans, is, not to control the life of im- 
pulse, but to kill it. Mortify the deeds of the 
flesh, kill one part of the self in order that the 
other may live in mystic union with the divine 
spirit. Of course, when success is attained life 
is poorer by the portion destroyed. For men 
of PauPs temperament, whose passions threaten 
to sweep them away, war to the death is prob- 
ably the only practicable policy. But not all 
people are like him, and we must not thought- 
lessly accept his view of the good life as a fight. 
The Platonic conception of our moral task as 
consisting essentially, not in an internecine war 



THE GREEK CONCEPTION 173 

in our members, but in an intelligent organiza- 
tion of our richly endowed nature, is much 
more rational and wholesome. To our young 
people and to all who crave activity, experience 
and development, we should say: ^^You want 
life? That is what you should want. It is 
life that we preach to you, abundant, rich and 
full, and it is precisely in order that you may 
have it that we urge you to organize your im- 
pulses and desires, for in that way only will 
your nature as a whole be able to attain its 
maximum fulfilment. Ideal goodness is sim- 
ply the amplest expression of human nature. 
As young men, you find the fighting instinct 
active within you. Well, this is very necessary 
to you, but it has other and nobler expressions 
than in killing men and burning cities. It is 
capable of being transmuted and used in chival- 
rous ways, and you will need every bit of it in 
combating the difficulties that will confront you 
in attempting to realize your ideal aims. A 
similar thing is true of all other impulses, and 
in pressing upon you the necessity of making 
each serve all your other interests, both present 
and future, we but show you how to realize what 
you really and supremely desire, namely, ful- 
ness and completeness of life. ' ' 

There is a defect in the Platonic ethics, as 
set forth in the Republic. The main conception 
is fundamentally true and is clearly and ade- 
quately stated: still it is pre-evolutionary and 



174 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

consequently too rigid. In recent times we 
have come to think of life in terms of growth. 
The moral life is a process, and while we agree 
that the elements which enter into it must be 
organized, we know that the organization can- 
not be effected once for all. Nothing can be 
done once for all. Adjustments and unceasing 
readjustments — in these life consists. We 
must therefore supplement Plato's idea with 
another, namely, that since the moral life is a 
process of growth toward an ideal of organiza- 
tion, good is that which promotes this develop- 
ment, bad is that which hinders it. These two 
ideas, that of organization and that of evolu- 
tion, are complementary. Taken together they 
round out ethical philosophy. From this point 
of view, the ideally good life is the life that is 
set in order, but one whose organization is 
plastic and capable of constant adjustment in 
a world whose law is change. 

The Philebus and ^^The Loveliest op 
Lives. ' ' The very heart of old Greece, her rev- 
erence for the intellect, her passionate love of 
order and beauty in human life, are expressed 
in the PMlehus, in which Plato defines as pre- 
cisely as possible his ideal of character and 
happiness. It is easy to summarize the plot or 
argument of this discussion, but almost impos- 
sible to convey an impression of its spirit. The 
object of the conversation is to determine the 
nature of ^*the good'^ which is the end of human 



THE GREEK CONCEPTION 175 

striving. Philebus, ^^with thousands of oth- 
ers," affirms that it is pleasure: the Platonic 
Socrates gives the first place to wisdom. At 
the outset it is agreed that the parties to the 
dialogue are not contending that any personal 
view may prevail, but that both are ^^ fighting 
for the truth.'' Socrates remarks upon ^^the 
power or faculty which the soul has of loving 
the truth, and of doing all things for the sake 
of it." 58 E. This is the tone of all these 
great writings. In the Gorgias, 458 A, Socra- 
tes says: ^^I am one of those who are very 
willing to be refuted if I say anything which 
is not true, and very willing to refute any one 
else who says what is not true, and quite as 
willing to be refuted as to refute." It is thus 
clear that ^^the Spirit of Truth" which Jesus 
promised should be with his disciples had come 
to Greece four centuries before. 

The discussion does not proceed far before it 
becomes clear that a life of pleasure devoid of 
intelligence is undesirable, and on the other 
hand that pleasure is a necessary ingredient in 
a normal life. It is explicitly stated that these 
good things are not good when isolated, and 
that the ideal is the concrete mixed life in which 
each has its place. Man's real good is neither 
to be immersed in sweet sensations nor to be a 
cold, passionless being, an incarnation of pure 
reason. The argument then reveals the fact 
that there are many kinds of pleasure, physical 



176 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

and mental, and all kinds of combinations of 
both. There are also different kinds of knowl- 
edge. It is also discovered that pleasure is, in 
many instances at least, to be regarded as a 
means, and that the lower kinds of pleasure are 
a menace not only to the higher, but also to 
health, to the order and sanity of life, and even 
to reason itself. It finally becomes a question 
of the nature of the mixture, of the ingredients 
and their relative place. The book closes with 
a prescription or recipe for ^Hhe loveliest of 
lives/ ^ The formula is quaint and implies dis- 
tinctions that we do not make, but we are left 
in no doubt as to the scale of values in the mind 
and heart of the greatest man of classic Greece. 
First came measure, the mean, that which tends 
not to excess, beauty, symmetry and truth, and 
^^all that belongs to that family''; then mind 
or wisdom ; next the sciences and the arts ; and 
finally the pleasures of the variety called pure. 
Thus, in the ^^fair and perfect mixture,'' which 
is the highest good, the best of the pleasures at- 
tain only to the fifth place, and in this way does 
Plato attempt to refute those who ^^ determine 
that pleasures make up the good of life and 
who deem the lusts of animals to be better 
witnesses than the inspirations of divine phi- 
losophy.'' 67 B. 

We have seen that Christianity at its best 
is a life of faith, hope and love, a life filled with 
and dominated by the victorious spirit of good- 



THE GREEK CONCEPTION 177 

ness and truth. Those who would have accu- 
rate knowledge of it must look for it in human 
lives, in those personalities which are its living 
representatives. Something of it may be ex- 
pressed in literature, but the key to the inter- 
pretation of this literature is Christian experi- 
ence and Christian life. Now what is true of 
Christianity we have seen to be true of that 
highest form of Greek religion which is not 
called religion but Platonic philosophy. And 
not only do we understand this, but it was 
clearly realized, expressed, and acted upon by 
Plato himself. Professor Burnet is accurate in 
saying that *^It was Plato's belief that no philo- 
sophical truth could be communicated in writ- 
ing at all ; it was only by some sort of immediate 
contact that one soul could kindle the flame in 
another. ' ' Philosophy for him was a life which 
was transmitted by a contact of souls. As we 
know, he ^'did not believe in books for serious 
purposes. In the Seventh Epistle he complains 
that, even in his lifetime, some of his hearers 
had published accounts of his doctrine of the 
Good, which, however, he repudiates.'' The 
passage is as follows: 

^* There is no writing of mine on this subject, 
nor ever shall be. It is not capable of expres- 
sion like other branches of study; but, as the 
result of long intercourse and a common life 
spent upon the thing, a light is suddenly kin- 
dled as from a leaping spark, and when it has 



178 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

reached the soul, it thenceforward finds nutri- 
ment for itself. I know this, at any rate, that if 
these things were to be written down or stated at 
all, they would be better stated by myself than by 
others, and I know too that I should be the per- 
son to suffer most from their being badly set 
down in writing. If I thought they could be 
adequately written down and stated to the 
world, what finer occupation could I have had 
in life than to write what would be of great 
service to mankind, and to reveal Nature in the 
light of day to all men? But I do not even 
think the effort to attain this a good thing for 
men, except for the very few who can be enabled 
to discover these things themselves by means 
of a brief indication. The rest it would either 
fill with contempt in a manner by no means 
pleasing or with a lofty and vain presumption 
as though they had learnt something grand.'' 
341 C-E. Burnet: ^^ Greek Philosophy,'' Part 
I, 221. 

Plato's procedure was in accordance with this 
theory. He believed that philosophy (or as we 
should say a life inspired by the religious and 
scientific spirit, by the fused and blended pas- 
sions for truth and beauty and goodness) could 
not be put in a book. It must be a man's very 
own. The function of the teacher *4s to rouse 
the soul, to turn it to the light, but the soul must 
see the light for itself." It must come up out 



THE GEEEK CONCEPTION 179 

of the cave and have a vision of the sun of 
reality. Otherwise its knowledge would be at 
second-hand. Why, then, did Plato, who re- 
fused to write his lectures, write the dialogues? 
In the Phcedrus, 275-278, he tells us. The 
writings fall into the hands of those who mis- 
understand and misinterpret them and they are 
powerless to explain or protect themselves. He 
therefore prefers ^^the living word of knowl- 
edge which has a soul . . . the intelligent word 
graven in the soul of the learner, which knows 
when to speak and when to be silent.^' He re- 
garded his thoughts as germinal truths to be 
sown in fruitful minds, saying that ^^even the 
best of writings are but a reminiscence of what 
we know, and that only in principles of justice 
and goodness and nobility taught and communi- 
cated orally for the sake of instruction and 
graven in the soul, which is the true way of 
writing, is there clearness and perfection and 
seriousness; such principles are man's own and 
his legitimate offspring; — ^being, in the first 
place, the word which he finds in his own bosom; 
secondly, the brethren and descendants and rela- 
tions of his idea which have been duly implanted 
by him in the souls of others.'' The wonderful 
dialogues he declares he wrote ^^for the sake of 
recreation and amusement ... as memorials to 
be treasured against the forgetfulness of old 
^S^y t)y himself, or by any other old man who is 



180 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

treading the same path. ' ' So deeply did Plato 
feel that the letter killeth and that it is the spirit 
that giveth life ! 

There is, finally, another respect in which 
Greek religion is, at least to some extent, like 
Christianity. Its principles and spirit were in- 
carnated in a great personality. In many of 
the dialogues, in the Phcedo, the Republic, and 
the Gorgias especially, we see the impression 
made npon Plato by the life of Socrates and the 
sublime spirit in which he faced its close. 
^^Such, Echecrates, was the end of our friend, 
a man, as we should say, the best and also the 
wisest and most righteous of his time.'^ I do 
not wish to introduce here any controversial 
matter, and will merely say that I believe Profes- 
sor Burnet's conclusions are correct, that in the 
Apology, Crito, and Phcedo we have Socrates 
as he substantially was, that the picture has not 
been idealized as much as has been generally 
supposed, and that Plato's account is far truer 
than Xenophon's. Then, it should not be for- 
gotten, that it is in the nature of the case impos- 
sible for us to know how far any great ideal 
cbaracter of history is purely ideal. Nor is it 
necessary for the purposes of present religious 
life that a historical character should have been 
identical with our ideal of him. If the actual 
Socrates was in some respects less perfect than 
the picture painted by his admiring pupil, the 
picture is none the less significant. If it is 



THE GREEK CONCEPTION 181 

ideal, it is the ideal of the Greek race at its best, 
the ideal which lay implicit in the hearts of the 
people. They needed Socrates to be that kind 
of a man in order that he might help them to 
rise to the same moral and spiritual height. If 
the Greeks had not had within them the capacity 
of living and dying as the Socrates of the Apol- 
ogy, the Crito, the Phcedo, and the Gorgias lived 
and died, if in the deepest depth of their hearts 
this was not what they most wanted to be, the 
great genius in whom their thoughts became 
clear and their spiritual yearnings found ex- 
pression would never have been able to paint 
these eternally attractive pictures of ideal hu- 
manity. 



PAET IV 
THE EELIGIONS OF INDIA 



CHAPTER XIII 

APPROACH TO THE SPIRITUAL. LIFE OF INDIA 




N our comparative study of religion 
we now approach a difficult and deli- 
cate task. The great prophets of Is- 
rael, the founders and apostles of 
Christianity and the philosophers of Greece are 
not strangers, but parts of our religious world. 
It is on their ideas and ideals that we have been 
nourished ; to us their words are spirit and life. 
Their hunger and thirst after righteousness, 
their passion for beauty and truth, their spirit 
of love and service, have spread by contagion 
from life to life and are among the chief motive 
forces in personal and social progress. We are 
now to try to understand the higher spiritual 
life of India, to comprehend the thoughts and 
aspirations of a gifted people for whom reli- 
gion has been the chief interest in life, w^ho 
have shown a courage and consistency in the 
pursuit of ideal aims unsurpassed in human his- 
tory, but whose condition, temperament and 
course of development have produced results 
different from anything we have ever known. 
When we first open the ^^ Sacred Books of the 

185 



186 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

East/' we are fascinated by the noble truths 
and beautiful sentiments we find expressed, 
puzzled by the magic and the fantastic super- 
stitions which abound, as in the Atharva Veda, 
and impressed by the strangeness of the ^in- 
tellectual landscape." There is, however, dan- 
ger that the alien and uncongenial elements in 
the Indian view of life may so repel us that we 
shall indiscriminately condemn the whole, and 
it requires an effort to remember that in the 
first contact between two civilizations which 
have developed along different lines, it is the 
defects, the failures and the ugly features which 
are most striking. 

Europeans and Americans travelling through 
India see the land covered with temples, some of 
which by reason of the multitude of sacrifices are 
veritable slaughter-houses ; innumerable lin- 
gams, phallic emblems used in the worship of 
Siva, which are obscene to us although they are 
without impure suggestion to devotees of that 
cult ; countless fakirs incredibly ingenious in de- 
vising modes of self torture; and a people di- 
vided into exclusive casts. The Hindu family is 
built on a religious idea which involves the com- 
plete subjection of women, which does not permit 
a husband to eat with his wife, which brings mar- 
riage to girls before puberty, thus depriving 
them of girlhood and education and laying the 
burdens of marriage upon them when they are 
physically and mentally unprepared, which pro- 



SPIRITUAL LIFE OF INDIA 187 

hibits the remarriage of girl widows and for- 
merly burned them alive on the funeral pyre of 
their husbands (sati), until the practice was 
stopped by British law, and which now con- 
demns these children to joyless lives and drives 
them away from every scene of happiness. Ob- 
serving these and similar aspects of Indian 
life, travellers of Christian training are apt to 
ask, What can we learn from a people whose 
aesthetic, social and moral standards are so out 
of accord with those we have been taught to 
regard as the highest? 

There is something there, nevertheless, some- 
thing of truth and beauty, something that may 
contribute to our own higher life. It is true 
that the extravagant expectations entertained 
in Max Mueller's time have not been realized, 
and that while we have learned that all reli- 
gions are deserving of respect as expressions 
of the longings, yearnings and aspirations of 
the human heart, it has become clear that not 
all are of equal value, and it is only the best in 
each that can have part in the symphony of 
religions. It is this best here and everywhere 
that we are seeking, and we are, therefore, re- 
lieved of the necessity of considering the less 
admirable side of Hindu life, the defects which 
the leaders of that life are even now struggling 
to overcome. Ours is the more pleasant and in 
every way more profitable task of discovering 
the summits of Indian thought, and the highest 



188 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

and purest expressions of its aspiration, the 
goals toward which India is moving and by 
which it is to be judged. But even when thus 
simplified, the problem remains difficult by rea- 
son of the vast complexity of thought and the 
bewildering variety of religious experiences, or, 
it may be more accurate to say, the variety of 
interpretations which the thinkers of India have 
put upon the fundamental religious experience. 
Indeed, Hinduism is an ocean, or, as one might 
feel on approaching its immense literature, a 
jungle. One Buddhist writing enumerates six- 
ty-two different theories of existence, and the 
western student is astonished both at the meta- 
physical subtlety and the intense interest with 
which these theories are developed. He will be 
inclined to agree that ^^no people on earth took 
religion so seriously, none toiled so on the way 
to salvation as they did.'' It will be conven- 
ient to present the higher life of India in its 
three chief aspects. Indeed, this is a natural 
classification, for the Hindus themselves have 
recognized three paths to salvation, namely, the 
thought path, the path of works, and the way of 
devotional faith, love and worship. The first 
is that of emancipation through knowledge ; it is 
expounded in that part of the Veda called the 
Upanishads and systematized in the Vedanta 
philosophy, the Sankhya and other systems. 
The second we shall pass over in order to give 
an account of Gautama, the Buddha's ^^Four 



SPIRITUAL LIFE OF INDIA 189 

Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path,'^ 
which a large part of the human race has ac- 
cepted as the law of life. The third is Bhakti- 
Marga, the Vishnuite religion of faith and love 
which is the inspiration of 150 millions of Hin- 
dus to-day. There are, however, certain pre- 
suppositions which practically all these systems 
have in common, which are foundations on 
which India's thinkers have built. They are 
deeper than the thought-structures that rest 
upon them, and have grown out of the heart, 
character and disposition of the people. Levels 
of life deeper than logic have furnished the 
premises, and as these are almost precisely the 
opposite of the assumptions on which the West 
has built its spiritual life, it is necessary, if we 
are to understand India's philosophies and re- 
ligions, to examine the foundations on which 
they rest. 



CHAPTEE XIV 

FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF THE RELIGIONS AND 
PHILOSOPHIES OF INDIA 




HE idea or conviction from which 
nearly all Indian thinking starts, 
which is assumed as an axiom practi- 
cally without debate, is one that to the 
greater part of the Christian world seems false. 
It is that life is essentially evil, that it is not 
worth living and cannot be made worth while. 
The assumption is not that there are many 
evils. This we admit, but we believe that the 
concrete evils which trouble us can be overr 
come. We do not spell Evil with a capital E, 
nor do we trouble ourselves much about the 
metaphysics of our difficulties. With the means 
that science has placed in our hands we have 
practically abolished certain terrible diseases, 
and we dare think that the rest are doomed. 
We believe that progress in this direction will 
continue, and that with better education, more 
efficient social organization and methods of dis- 
tribution, we shall in time abolish poverty and 
disease and fear. But the Hindus, except so far 
as they have come under western influence, do 

190 



EELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES 191 

not believe this. They build on a pessimistic as- 
sumption. Professor Deussen explicitly admits 
this fact : * ' The question of the possibility of a 
release from individual existence, which forms 
the cornerstone of the Vedanta, as of other In- 
dian systems, presupposes the pessimistic view 
that all individual existence is a misery/^ 
''The System of the Vedanta,'^ p. 474, 

^^ Joyless are these worlds/' says the Bri- 
hadaranyaJca, 4, 4, 11. Why, then, is not the 
solution, the true salvation, to be found in 
death? The answer is surprising. The reason 
is that we die only to be reborn. We have lived 
countless lives, and, unless we can find a way 
of escape, we shall have to go through an infi- 
nite number of individual existences in the fu- 
ture. We are held by a remorseless force, are 
bound in an endless chain of existences. Sal- 
vation means, not happiness here, not a happy 
immortality in heaven, but release from this 
process of living and dying only to be reborn. 
Whatever be the differences between the reli- 
gions and philosophies of India, they are prac- 
tically all identical in these two respects, and 
salvation in every case means escape from 
transmigration. If the Hindus were strictly 
logical, if they had no happy inconsistencies, 
if they cherished no thoughts and feelings not 
in accord with these assumptions, we should not 
need to go farther. For we build on opposite 
assumption. The first book in the Bible says 



192 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

that God looked on his creation and called it 
good, and, despite acknowledged evils in the 
world, we feel that the divine judgment was 
just. The famous word of our latest seer 
awakens a response in our hearts: we dare 
aspire to ^^ convert the furies into muses and 
the hells into benefit.'' Of course, there have 
been pessimists in the West, but they are re- 
garded, not as truly representative, but as curi- 
osities ; and it is a well known fact that nearly 
all of them have been sick men, or, despite their 
intellectual brilliancy, not quite normal in their 
constitution. Our literature, both secular and 
religious, is healthy-minded. 

The soul of a people comes to expression in 
its poetry, and our hymnbooks, for example, con- 
tain an increasing number of such hymns as 
these : 

This is my Father's world: 

Upon its wondrous birth 
The stars of light in phalanx bright 

Sang out in heavenly mirth. 

Maltbie B. Baheock. 

The harp at nature's advent strung 

Has never ceased to play; 
The song the stars of morning sung 

Has never died away. 

Whittier. 

Typical also are Eobert Grant's paraphrase 
of Psahn CIV: 

worship the King all-glorious above, 



EELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES 193 

and J. Vila Blake's beautiful lines, beginning 

Father, thou art calling, calling to us plainly. 

So, too, in history, we do not find mere repe- 
tition, but progress, something like the develop- 
ment of a divine purpose, and with Samuel 
Johnson, we sing: 

Life of Ages, richly poured, 
Love of God, unspent and free, 
Flowing in the prophet's word 
And the people's liberty! 

Never was to chosen race 
That unstinted tide confined; 
Thine is every time and place, 
Fountain sweet of heart and mind! 

Breathing in the thinker's creed, 
Pulsing in the hero's blood. 
Nerving simplest thought and deed, 
Freshening time with truth and good! 

For us life is good, and our reasonable hopes 
keep us striving to make it much better. Our 
ideal is not escape from existence. 'Tis more 
and fuller life we want. The ^'more abundant 
life'' which the supreme leader of the religious 
life came to give is what we most desire. And 
if we admit that there is pain in evolution, that 
the whole creation groaneth and travaileth, we 
are nevertheless sure that ^^the sufferings of 
this present time are not worthy to be compared 
with the glory that shall be," and even in the 



194 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

darkest hours we rejoice in ^'the first fruits of 
the Spirit.'' 

It is of the greatest importance to realize this 
difference of fundamental attitude. And the 
importance is not merely theoretical, but prac- 
tical. The world is rapidly becoming one, and 
isolation will soon be impossible. Whether we 
like it or not, the East and the West are to be 
thrown into much closer contact and the result- 
ing influence is bound to be mutual. India is 
already showing the effect of Christian influ- 
ence in the new movements for education, for 
charity and philanthropy. We have doubtless 
much to learn from India, but what is offered 
should be thoroughly examined, and we should 
deliberately guard against the infection of pes- 
simism. What has led so many millions of our 
fellow men for so many centuries to take such 
a despairing view of life has not yet been ex- 
plained, although there are many guesses. 
Some have found the cause in a depressing 
climate, others in a decline of vitality due to the 
marriage of the immature, others still attribute 
it to an unhappy social state. Whatever be the 
solution of the problem, it is pathetic that mul- 
titudes have found so little in life that their 
deepest longing has been for release. It is true 
that we have experiences that make possible the 
beginning of an understanding. When weak- 
ened by ill health, poisoned by fatigue, or dis- 
couraged by failure, we know moments of gloom. 



RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES 195 

But they pass, our faith and hope and courage 
return, and we feel that life is the richer for 
these incidents. We know that love brings re- 
sponsibilities and oftentimes suffering as well 
as joy, but it does not occur to us to doubt that 
it is worth all that it costs. Our richest pleas- 
ures are not unmixed, but, as a great teacher of 
ethics has said, are ' ' fat with pain. ' ' And as to 
difficulties, the best evidence that they are a 
tonic, and that the conflict with them and tri- 
umph over them is a joy, is sporty which is noth- 
ing but the setting up of artificial difficulties 
for the sake of struggling with and overcoming 
them. 

We must, however, guard against a misunder- 
standing. Because the presuppositions of In- 
dian thought, the foundations of the Vedanta 
of Sankara and of the Buddhism of Gautama, 
are pessimistic, it does not follow that the In- 
dian outlook upon life is that of steady and 
consistent despair. All that is meant is that 
the doctrine is that of hopelessness as to our 
natural life, as to the future of humanity on 
earth, and that it casts a shadow wherever it 
comes. As a matter of fact, there is hope in 
India as elsewhere. The people believe still 
in the endless series of rebirths and few hope 
to escape it, just as few in Christian lands ex- 
pect to be saints; but the average man finds 
comfort in the thought that, if he lives well, 
karma will ensure his reward. He will be re- 



196 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

born in a better state on earth, or in one of the 
numerous heavens; besides, ^^the gods of Hin- 
duism are now believed to be able to save those 
who put their trust in them. ' ^ 

If, as Professor James has said, religion is a 
man's total reaction upon life, — this positive or 
negative vital response which precedes logic 
and argument, — it will be well to consider fur- 
ther the two characteristic attitudes of pessi- 
mism and optimism, of despair and faith. And 
there is the more reason for this because inter- 
est in religious matters is becoming less aca- 
demic and more practical and vital; and while 
it is very important to understand the Vedic 
view of life as systematized by Sankara, what 
we are most concerned about is to know what 
we mean, what in the light of the spiritual ex- 
perience of the world is the attitude we should 
take. It is, therefore, illuminating to discover 
that in the West, as in India, there are two very 
different temperaments, which F. W. Newman 
had in mind when he said that ^^Grod has two 
families of children on this earth, the once-born 
and the twice-horn.^^ The former are the 
^^healthy-minded''; they find the kingdom of 
God within, but they also believe in a kingdom 
of God that is growing up in human society. 
They believe in progress, they love the earth 
and have a deep sense of the goodness and pres- 
ent worth of our natural life. The others are 
the ^^ sick-souls," who feel deeply the need of 



KELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES 197 

deliverance, and regard *^the earthly life not 
as an end in itself, but merely as a road by 
which we must travel to our true destination. ' ' 
When they read the New Testament the pas- 
sages that appeal to them most strongly are 
such statements as ^^The whole world lieth in 
the evil one, ' ' and * ^ the friendship of the world 
is enmity with God.'^ As interpreters of life 
and religion they prefer Bunyan and Tolstoy 
to Channing, Parker, and Emerson. Indian 
pessimism is more congenial to them than such 
a spirit as found expression in these words of 
Theodore Parker: ^^I have swum in the clear 
sweet waters all my days ; and if sometimes they 
were a little cold, and the stream ran adverse 
and something rough, it was never too strong to 
be breasted and swum through. From the days 
of earliest boyhood, ... up to the gray-bearded 
manhood of this time, there is none but has left 
me honey in the hive of memory that I now feed 
on for present delight. When I recall the years 
... I am filled with a sense of sweetness and 
wonder that such little things can make a mor- 
tal so exceedingly rich.'' 

An expression of this healthy-minded attitude 
that is probably destined to become classic is 
that of Edward Everett Hale. In response to 
a questionnaire, he said that as a child and 
young man he was trained in a simple and ra- 
tional religion, so that he had no religious or 
irreligious struggles and no idea what the 



198 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

*^ problem of life'' was. ^^I always knew God 
loved me, and I was always grateful for the 
world he placed me in. . . . To live with all my 
might seemed to me easy ; to learn where there 
was so much to learn seemed pleasant and al- 
most of course; to lend a hand, if one had a 
chance, natural ; and if one did this, why, he en- 
joyed life because he could not help it, and with- 
out proving to himself that he ought to enjoy 
it.'' 

We can never be too clear about assumptions, 
and as we now approach Indian religion, it is 
with the explicit recognition of the fundamental 
difference of attitude. We love life and believe 
in it and salvation means more of it. For our 
kinsmen on the other side of the world the su- 
preme good is present peace and ultimate re- 
lease. One of the ways by which millions have 
sought to reach it is the Vedanta — the thought 
path to salvation — and to understand this, if 
we can, is our first task. 



1 




CHAPTER XV 

THE RELIGION OF THE VEDA AND THE SYSTEM 
OF THE VEDANTA 

HE Veda is an extensive literature, the 
date of whose origin is unknown, but it 
was certainly in existence before there 
was a city in India. Like the Bible 
of the West, this Oriental Bible was a gradual 
growth, and it presents to the Higher Critics, 
who seek to arrange its elements in the order 
of their development, a very difficult problem. 
According to Professor Oldenberg, ^Hhe texts in 
the shape in which they have been transmitted to 
us resemble paintings by old masters, which 
bear unmistakable traces of alternate injuries 
and attempted restorations by competent and 
incompetent hands. . . . The Eig Veda, indeed, 
is not unlike a ruin." ^^ Ancient India," 17, 
26. It is like our Bible also in this, that it con- 
tains parts that point backward and others that 
look forward, traces of the savage religion of 
the past and the beginning of conceptions which 
are the light and inspiration of later ages. In 
it may be found the germs of most of the phi- 
losophies and religions that have arisen in India 

199 



200 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

since its time. Among other interesting dis- 
coveries is this, that the ethical theism which 
Judaism and Christianity have given to the 
world was present, in tendency at least, in the 
Vedic age. The association of the ideas of God 
and the good had begun, and Varuna, who seems 
to be the same as the God of light and goodness 
proclaimed by Zoroaster, was well on his way 
to become India's God of holiness and mercy. 
But for some reason unknown to us the process 
of development was arrested, and the sin-aveng- 
ing and sin-forgiving Varuna was supplanted 
by such ^^ bruiser and tippler divinities" as 
Indra. 

We know that India did attain to exalted con- 
ceptions and a noble idealism, but they are 
obviously the products of reflexion and not 
reached by the path followed by the western 
world. As Oldenberg remarks, the God of Is- 
rael was created by history. Thought had part 
in his development from a tribal deity, for the 
prophets were thinkers ; but the stirring events, 
the crises and tragedies of Hebrew history, had 
much to do in shaping the conception of his na- 
ture and function. The Brahman of the Upani- 
shads and the Vedanta, on the other hand, was 
created by reflexion, and those who seek him find 
him, if at all, not through worship, love, acts of 
will or good works, but through knowledge. 
For this reason the most sympathetic exposition 
of the Vedanta system necessarily seems like an 



THE RELIGION OF THE VEDA 201 

intellectual performance rather than a religious 
discussion. Fortunately for those who would 
understand this highest result of India's reli- 
gious thinking, such an exposition exists. Pro- 
fessor Paul Deussen, of Kiel, has not only 
brought to the task an unsurpassed scholarship, 
but he is so completely in sympathy with the 
fundamental conception of Vedantism that he 
frankly avows his acceptance, and claims for it 
* ^ an inestimable value for the whole race of man- 
kind. . . . Whatever new and unwonted paths 
the philosophy of the future may strike out, this 
principle will remain permanently unshaken. 
. . . The New Testament and the Upanishads, 
these two noblest products of the religious con- 
sciousness of mankind, are found, when we 
sound their deeper meaning, to be nowhere in 
irreconcilable contradiction, but in a manner the 
most attractive serve to elucidate and complete 
one another.'' ^^The Eeligion and Philosophy 
of India," pp. 39,40,49. 

The problem of salvation is, as we have seen, 
that of escaping from the endless series of lives, 
the ceaseless round of living, dying and being 
reborn. The law that governs this process is 
called karma. The universe is regarded as a 
moral order, all merit being rewarded and all 
sin expiated, if not in one incarnation then in 
another. Every man's life is morally prede- 
termined. He inherits from his own past, and 
is now shaping his future. His character will 



202 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

decide his destiny, and his present condition is 
evidence of his character. We say, ^'Whatso- 
ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.'' 
India says that what we are reaping we must 
have sown. Has a man been blind from baby- 
hood? The cause is not a neglected ophthalmia 
due to a well-known minute organism. The real 
explanation is that this man is expiating sins 
committed in a former existence. It is not 
retributive justice, sent by the gods, but the 
result of the moral structure of the universe. 
This view, we may well believe, had its origin 
in the faith that the heart of the world is some- 
how just, in the unwillingness of men to rest in 
the thought that injustice is final, and it tre- 
mendously reinforces the sense of responsibil- 
ity. It offers a solution to those minds that are 
distressed by the inequalities of existence, by 
the suffering of the innocent and the prosperity 
of the wicked. It teaches men not to complain, 
but to build up a happier future by present 
righteousness. ''Every act that a man per- 
forms as a moral agent is seed cast into the 
ground. When he acts a crime, he sows night- 
shade instead of corn, and his punishment is 
that he reaps poison instead of bread. . . . The 
seed was planted when the deed was done, and 
no power in heaven or on earth can prevent 
the ripening of the penal fruit." If the sinner 
seems to escape the necessity of reaping, it is 
because we see only his present life. Eeap he 



THE EELIGION OF THE VEDA 203 

must, if not in the present, then in some future 
existence. 

With regard to this explanation of human 
experience, this way of connecting character 
and destiny, three observations may be made. 
Those who attribute all suffering exclusively 
to moral causes, will obviously not be led by 
their theory to look for and attempt to remove 
the physical and social causes of evil. There 
will be no societies for the prevention of blind- 
ness due to ophthalmia neonatorum and tra- 
choma. Organizations for the prevention of 
tuberculosis could get no support from believers 
in karma. Furthermore, and this is explicitly 
admitted, the nerve of western philanthropy 
would be cut if such a view were generally ac- 
cepted. For it means that our desire to help 
one another is futile, that although it is well for 
us, for our own spiritual life, to try to be help- 
ful, after all we really cannot help. The un- 
fortunates who move us to pity are not unjustly 
treated, their misery is but the inevitable result 
of sins they must have committed. It is use- 
less to try to interfere with karma. And, 
thirdly, whatever be the satisfaction it affords 
to the moral theorist by justifying the ways of 
the universe to men, karma has not been a pleas- 
ant thought to India. Indeed, men have loathed 
this ^^ eternally revolving wheel of birth and 
death"; and deliverance from it is precisely 
what they crave. The Vedanta, Buddhism, and 



204 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

the Vishnuite religion differ in fundamental re- 
spects, but they agree that salvation is escape 
from transmigration. 

According to the Vedanta, the blessed release 
comes to those who attain to knowledge. Men 
are saved by metaphysics. Our misery arises 
from the fact that we take the world to be real, 
whereas it is an illusion. It is a dream-world 
and life is a kind of nightmare. Until we are 
awakened, the dream is a horrible reality. Sal- 
vation consists in being disillusioned, in com- 
prehending the fact that the world of the senses 
consists of appearances only, in the discovery 
of the saving truth that behind the universe is 
the eternal principle of all being, Brahman; 
that beneath the superficial self with whose in- 
terests we are chiefly concerned is the deeper 
and real self, Atman; and, finally, that these 
two are one. Moreover, this oneness is identity. 
The soul of each of us is not a manifestation, a 
part, of Brahman; it is Brahman. The Chan- 
dogya-TJ panishad, 3, 14, says that though the 
^^soul in the inmost heart is smaller than a grain 
of rice, or of barley, or of mustard seed, or of 
millet, or a grain of millet's kernel, it is yet 
greater than the earth, greater than the atmos- 
phere, greater than the heaven, greater than 
these worlds.'' 

No more courageous disciples of reason have 
ever lived than the men who originated and de- 
veloped this view. In our time and country, 



THE RELIGION OF THE VEDA 205 

science has taught us to respect facts and on 
them to build our theories. But the Indian 
thinkers had more confidence in their religious 
convictions and their reason than they had in 
the evidence of the five senses. They were 
therefore uncompromising in their loyalty to 
the conceptions to which their thinking led. 
Were these contradicted by the data of the phys- 
ical world? The answer is that that is no dif- 
ficulty, for the physical world is seeming only ; 
it is not what it appears to be, it is Maya, illu- 
sion. Their thought led them to the conception 
of a divine Spirit of which they could say little 
except that it was one, that it did not lose its 
unity in the universe which it sustains, and that 
it is not really divided in our seemingly sepa- 
rate souls. The inference is clear, and a time 
came in the forests of ancient India when some 
man was bold enough to say : ^ * The self in man 
is not merely the divine Self showing itself at 
one point ; the human self is the divine Self, the 
divine Self whole and complete. I am Brah- 
man. '^ This, says J. N. Farquhar, *^was but a 
natural inference from foregoing thought, yet it 
was the boldest, the greatest venture ever made 
by the Indian mind. ' ' ^ * Crown of Hinduism, ' ^ 
223. 

Brahman = Atman. In this simple equation 
is expressed the philosophy of the Upanishads. 
God and the soul are identical. ^^Tat tvam 
asi,'^ what Brahman is, what God is, *Hhat art 



206 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

thou/' When one attains this knowledge, the 
immediate intuition of the identity of his soul 
with the absolute being behind the shifting 
scenes, behind the phantasmagoria with which 
he had been concerned, he recognizes the un- 
reality of the world of transmigration and the 
great illusion imposes on him no more. He 
awakes from his dream. There *4s no longer 
a world, a body, or suffering. '' There is noth- 
ing but Brahman, no individuality separate 
from him. He is spiritual reality, but is above 
consciousness, and beyond good and evil. The 
disillusioned saint is not saved by his action or 
his moral striving. He does not, of course, do 
evil, neither is he concerned to do good. In- 
deed, good works keep a man under the domin- 
ion of karma just as completely as evil deeds. 
If Brahman did anything he himself could not 
escape karma. He who realizes that all action 
is in the dream-world, which is only an illusion 
wrought by the great magician, ceases to act. 
He is undeceived, emancipated from love as well 
as hate, free from all desire, and attains the 
peace of detachment. He will not be reborn, for 
^^ knowledge burns the seed of works so that no 
material is at hand to cause a rebirth. '' He 
will live out his natural life, his body will exist 
for a while, because, poor fool, in past exist- 
ences, he craved life and thought to be happy, 
and he must now both reap the reward of merit 
and pay the penalty for his sins. But as he no 



THE RELIGION OF THE VEDA 207 

longer desires or acts, no new existence will be 
necessary. He lingers among his fellows for 
a while, '^ just as the potter's wheel goes on re- 
volving even when the vessel it supported is 
completed," but this is due to acquired momen- 
tum, and no new impulse is being given. When 
death comes, he is ^^ resolved into Brahman,'' 
and returns not again. 

" As rivers run and in the deep 
Lose name and form and disappear, 
So goes, from name and form released, 
The wise man to the deity." 

If we are curious to know more about the 
state of the liberated saint after his death, the 
answer is that he is not merely united to Brah- 
man ; he is Brahman, and Brahman as absolute 
spirituality is not to be known or perceived, for 
in knowing and perceiving he is always subject 
and can never be object. He is not in time or 
space, and no idea that we can have corresponds 
to his real being. 

The Vedanta doctrine, then, is that when a 
man '^ comes to himself,'' he ^^ knows himself to 
be the Eternal God, present in all the universe, 
the sum and substance of all reality. He stands 
immortal, fearless, desireless, beyond the reach 
of pain, or sorrow, or doubt, his experience all 
ended, his soul filled with the blessedness of a 
great peace. ' ' Extravagant as such a view may 
seem, Christian scholars recognize the fact that 



208 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

the Indian thinkers who hold it have had a vi- 
sion of a great truth; moreover their concep- 
tions have remarkable parallels in the philoso- 
phy and religion of the West. The author of 
the ** Crown of India'' freely admits this: 
*^The doctrine of the identity of man with God 
suggests a great many valuable thoughts. No 
modern thinker is likely to accept it as it stands ; 
but all will agree that it comes so near to being 
the right expression of a group of priceless 
truths that it is no wonder that early India 
hailed it as a revelation. Every one will recog- 
nize how close the relationship is between the 
doctrine and the following ideas: man's dignity 
and spiritual grandeur; the immensity of his 
intellectual faculty; the boundlessness of his 
desires; his passion for immortality; his near- 
ness, likeness, and kinship to God; the imme- 
diacy of intercourse which he may have with 
God; God's actual presence in the human heart 
and conscience ; and, lastly, the spontaneous de- 
sire of the soul for union with God. But we 
may go one step farther. These men had not 
merely thought out a conception of God and of 
man. Their new belief touched them in the 
depths of their spiritual nature, and overflowed 
in religious experience. The exalted language 
of the best passages of the earliest literature is 
sufficient to attest the reality of their inter- 
course with God." P. 226. 
The supreme achievements of the Indian 



THE RELIGION OF THE VEDA 209 

thinkers will appear less strange if stated in the 
familiar terms of western thought. We know 
that the view of things which suflSces for the 
needs of everyday life, which accepts onr per- 
ceptions at their face value, which regards the 
world as a collection of things', of objects which 
have or have not value for human use, is super- 
ficial as compared with the conceptions of sci- 
ence. For physics and chemistry, reality is a 
vast number of molecules, atoms and ions 
moving in accord with mechanical laws. But 
thought goes to a still deeper level. The small- 
est particles of matter are now conceived of as 
charges of electricity, that is, in terms of energy, 
a view that has been developed by Ostwald. 
For Bergson the ultimate reality is a great life 
that flows through time, the physical world being 
a materialization due to a reversal of the cur- 
rent. It is not necessary to dwell on this sub- 
ject longer than to observe that the answer to 
the question which view is the most useful de- 
pends on what our purposes are. For every- 
day life the first is adequate. It would hinder 
rather than help action for us to be thinking 
of chairs and tables, not as things, but as sys- 
tems of complex moving molecules. 

Still, we know ^that thought draws nearer the 
truth as it penetrates to deeper levels. We have 
seen that the Greek thinkers believed in some- 
thing permanent in and behind the world of be- 
coming, whose presence in the latter gives it 



210 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

whatever reality it possesses. And for the Kan- 
tian philosophy, the world as perceived by the 
senses consists of appearances only. As there 
would be no sweetness in a world where there 
was no man or other sentient being to taste it, so 
in a world without man and without creatures 
possessing senses and a mental apparatus simi- 
lar to his, there would be no space, no time, no 
causality. These are merely forms of percep- 
tion and thought. We do not know the nature 
of the reality behind the scenes, the thing in 
itself. All we know is the way in which it af- 
fects us. If we were differently constituted, we 
would be differently affected. We know as lit- 
tle of the Absolute as the Vedantists know of 
Brahman. For them the universe is Maya, illu- 
sion ; for the Kantians, it is appearance, an ap- 
parition. Our consciousness can tell us how the 
ultimate reality affects us, constituted as we 
are, but it can tell us nothing more. What we 
call the naive, empirical view works very well 
in practical life, where we are frankly dealing 
with appearances, but there are needs of our 
nature which it does not satisfy. If all our 
thoughts were on this level, we could never hope 
to find God and so satisfy our ardent longing, 
for the reason that we could only look for him 
somewhere in the physical universe or at some 
time in history. 

The Vedanta, Western Philosophy, and Chris- 
tianity therefore agree at least in this, that 



THE RELIGION OF THE VEDA 211 

finding reality and God is not so much the task 
of sight as of insight, that our quest for him 
is successful when we look for him, not in the 
world of physics, but in the depths of thought 
and love and life. Indeed, it is true, as Pro- 
fessor Deussen has pointed out, that Indian 
thought at its best is strikingly like the highest 
conceptions to which Christian thinkers have 
attained: ^^The Indians, setting out from the 
worship of personified powers of nature, recog- 
nized in that raising of the feeling above the 
consciousness of individual existence which oc- 
curs in prayer, that is, in the Brahman, the 
central force in all the forces of nature, the 
shaping and supporting principle of all Gods 
and all worlds ; the word Brahman in the whole 
Eigveda never meaning anything less than this 
lifting and spiritualizing power of prayer.'' 
*'The System of the Vedanta,'' 49. That is, 
the Indians, when trying to frame some concep- 
tion of the ultimate reality, of what is at the 
source and heart of things, did what men always 
do; they identified reality with their deepest 
spiritual experience, they were convinced that 
reality was closely akin to and was best sym- 
bolized by what was highest and most precious 
to them. The spiritual genius to whom we owe 
the Fourth Gospel has in a similar way hyposta- 
tized what was divinest for him, and so he tells 
us that the Word, the divine Reason or Logos 
was in the beginning, that he not only was with 



212 THE SYMPATHY OF itELIGIONS 

God, but that he was God. Through him all 
existence came into being, and no existence came 
into being apart from him. For this writer 
Jesus was the Logos become incarnate, who 
walked and taught among men, yet was one with 
the Father. That which was the principle of 
creation lies at the heart of humanity and is 
indeed the light that lighteth every man. 

Similar as the Indian and Christian concep- 
tions are, they are not identical, and the differ- 
ences are of the greatest practical importance. 
In the West, the experience of mystic union with 
the divine is felt to be consistent with the exist- 
ence and intensification of the personality. 
Logic may say ^^ Either God or man,'' but Chris- 
tian experience rejects the alternative, and de- 
clares that conscious union with the highest does 
not submerge the personality, but raises it to 
its highest power. Man feels that he is never 
so completely and truly himself as when he is 
the expression, the implement, of infinite good- 
ness and truth. 

The greatest contrast, however, is in the ethi- 
cal and social result of the two ideals of salva- 
tion. The Christian who believes that he has 
experienced union with God in love is aflame 
with the passion for human service, whereas 
the saint who has reached emancipation by way 
of the Vedanta, who has got rid of the illusion 
of separate individuality and all plurality and 
no longer feels a desire of any kind, is charac- 



THE RELIGION OF THE VEDA 213 

terized by his detachment from the world. He 
does no evil, he does no good, for he is the 
actionless Brahman. The world which he seems 
to neglect, but really transcends, is worthless 
because it is unreal, and the result is that he 
dissolves the ties which bind him to what are but 
objects moving in a dream. As eternal Brah- 
man he has nothing to do with wife and chil- 
dren, with property and business, with prog- 
ress or social and political duty. The ideal life, 
according to this view, is divided into four 
parts : As a student, the young man learns the 
Vedas; he then becomes a householder, and 
rears a family; as he grows older, he forsakes 
his home and becomes a hermit in the forest, 
devoting his life to reflection on the mystic sig- 
nificance of the ritual; and finally as a san- 
nyasin, or renouncer, he wanders about, a prac- 
tically naked beggar, outside of society and 
without concern for any human interest. He is 
not moral, he is not immoral, he is Brahman, 
who is apart from all action and above time and 
change. He does not worship, he does not hate, 
he does not love, he is harmless and, from the 
social point of view, useless. 

Professor Deussen himself frankly admits this 
*^ fundamental want of the Vedanta system, this 
absence of a true morality. '^ He thinks the 
command, ^^Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself is an immediate consequence of the 
fundamental concept of the Vedanta. One can 



214 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

love his neighbor as himself ^^just because he 
has recognized him as his own Self. This fol- 
lows from the doctrine that the world is Brah- 
man, and Brahman is the Soul; and we do in 
fact find this conclusion drawn, though not in 
Sankara and indeed nowhere to the extent we 
should have expected. '^ It is found in the 
Bhagavadgita, 13, 27-28. 

"This highest Godhead hath his seat in every being, 
And liveth though they die; who seeth him, is seeing, 
And he who everywhere this highest God hath found, 
Will not wound self through self.'' 

" System of the Vedanta," 59, 404. 

How this should work out in the concrete 
world is illustrated by an incident cited by Far- 
quhar: *^Two Hindu women fell out in the 
street. One became very violent. The other 
turned to her and said solemnly, ^Hush, you will 
hurt the Brahman in you. ^ ^ ' 

We thus observe the importance of the 
thought side of the religious life. If you be- 
lieve that the world and human individuality 
are an illusion, that salvation is to be awakened 
from ignorance as from a dream, you will not, 
if you are logically consistent, be greatly inter- 
ested in social endeavors to improve the dream- 
world. If an impersonal Brahman is for you 
the first principle of things and at the same time 
the goal of your personal endeavor, you 
naturally will not care greatly to share in edu- 



THE RELIGION OF THE VEDA 215 

cational efforts to develop human personalities 
through education and to make our natural life 
on this earth worth while. You will have but 
a slight sense of the objective worth of moral 
action and will be almost exclusively concerned 
with your subjective state. If, however, you 
have been nurtured on the ideals of Plato, who 
would through education bring his citizens up 
out of the cave and make them see the light only 
to send them down again into the slums to help 
their less fortunate fellow men; or if you have 
heard and believed the great teaching that God 
is love and that to love, and hence to serve, is to 
be born of God and know God, you go out into 
a real world which is slowly climbing out of 
animalism and barbarism, and become an effec- 
tive instrument for the furthering of the 
divine purpose and for the promotion of intel- 
lectual, moral, social and political progress. 
The Vedanta is the systematization, by San- 
kara in the eighth century of our era, of the main 
ideas of the Brahma-Sutras of Badarayana. 
But the Upanishads themselves are not the 
product of a single thinker or school, and ideas 
not at all in accord with the Vedanta are 
found therein. Indeed, more space is devoted 
to the expression of theistic and pantheistic 
views than to the philosophy of the impersonal 
Brahman. Sankara recognizes this difficulty, 
and meets it by drawing a distinction between 
the ^^ higher knowledge'* of Brahman and the 



216 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 



ii 



lower/ ^ The former is indeed the very 
truth, but since not all are able to receive it, a 
concession is made to human weakness. Those 
who cannot endure the strong meat must be 
treated as babes and fed with milk. The eso- 
teric doctrine alone is true, but as few can reach 
it, and as even they find that holding consistently 
to it is like standing on a giddy height in a 
slippery place, some accommodation is neces- 
sary, and views are proclaimed which are more 
in accordance with the demands of the human 
heart. Brahman is no longer impersonal, but 
endowed with various perfections, and those 
who worship him are rewarded with happiness. 
After death they go to the realm of the gods, 
and eventually, if they keep on their way, they 
may attain to the higher knowledge and conse- 
quent deliverance. Good men, who perform 
their religious duties but do not attain either 
to the higher or lower knowledge, are neverthe- 
less rewarded. After death they go to the 
realms of the blest on the moon and may hope 
for happy reincarnations on earth. The wicked 
will suffer in hell or be reborn in low condition 
and unhappy state. 

Although Sankara called this a ^4ower'^ 
knowledge in contrast with the ^^ higher^' 
knowledge expounded in his system, we need 
not take these terms seriously. That India's 
religious life has broken away from his doctrine 
is due not to weakness or perversity, but to 



THE RELIGION OF THE VEDA 217 

man's instinct for the God of love and grace, 
to his profound sense that the source and goal 
of all is at least as high as personality, and to 
his ineradicable optimism, his constitutional 
tendency toward a view of life that opens and 
leaves open the doors of opportunity and hope. 
Of the many systems of religious and irre- 
ligious thought which have been developed 
from the various views and tendencies ex- 
pressed in the Upanishads, there are two others 
that are of especial interest. The atheistic 
Sankhya philosophy, which is closely related to 
Buddhism, will be discussed in the next chapter. 
Ramanuja's interpretation of the Vedanta- 
Sutras is a revolt against the doctrine of the 
impersonal Brahman and against pantheism. 
He teaches that through the grace of God to 
man and through man's love to God, the soul 
attains release from transmigration, but retains 
its individuality in an eternity of bliss. His 
teaching has been incorporated into the Vish- 
nuite religion which is dominant in India to-day, 
and will be discussed in chapters XVIII-XXI. 




CHAPTER XVI 

THE WAY OF SALVATION PBOCLAIMED BY GAUTAMA, 
THE BUDDHA 

those who have been nurtured on 
the Christian tradition and who, not- 
withstanding certain doctrinal dif- 
ferences, practically all agree that 
that religion, reduced to its lowest terms, means 
at least belief in God and an attitude of faith 
and courage, hope and love, that is, spiritual 
optimism, it seems strange that a pessimistic 
atheism such as that proclaimed by Gautama, 
the Buddha, should be called a religion. With 
our faith in life and our craving for more of 
it, the gospel of Nirvana at first appears to be 
a kind of religious nihilism. Yet a half hour's 
perusal of the Buddhist literature is enough to 
convince us that, whatever be the Buddhistic 
view of existence, the followers of Gautama are 
no strangers to that religious experience which 
he was thinking of who said that the kingdom 
of God is righteousness, joy and peace in the 
Holy Spirit. Since we are fortunate enough to 
live in an age when the sweeping condemnation 
and the wholesale approval of views different 

218 



THE WAY OF SALVATION 219 

from our own are no longer acceptable, and 
since we are convinced that we have everything 
to gain and nothing to lose by an examination 
at once critical and sympathetic of other phi- 
losophies and religions, let us proceed to the 
business we have in hand, namely, that of trying 
to get an inside view of a religion, or way of 
salvation, in which millions of good men and 
w^omen have found comfort, inspiration and 
help for nearly twenty-five centuries. If we 
are to do Buddhism justice, we must first of all 
make a distinction between the original message 
of Gautama, which it is the concern of scholars 
such as H. Oldenberg and T. W. Rhys Davids 
to set in clear light, and Buddhism as a living 
force which is to-day transforming and inspir- 
ing the lives of men and women in Ceylon, 
Burma and Japan. 

Primitive Buddhism. The views proclaimed 
by Gautama were not unrelated to those which 
prevailed in his country in his time, and they 
can in fact be understood only when studied in 
relation to other systems. Besides the ideas 
systematized in the Vedanta, there are other 
tendencies and views in the Upanishads which 
have been taken up and developed by bold and 
consistent thinkers into different systems, which 
have, either by modification or reaction, pro- 
duced still other philosophies and religions 
that have played a great part in the life of 
India. From one of these, the Sankhya, Bud- 



220 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

dhism has, so some scholars think, been derived. 
At any rate, they are very closely related. 
According to the Sankhya, reality consists 
of matter and souls. These really have nothing 
to do with each other, although the misery of 
our human state depends upon the illusion that 
they have. The real self lies deep and neither 
suffers nor acts, and salvation comes with the 
realization of this truth. This is, of course, 
seemingly contrary to experience. The expla- 
nation of the paradox is that much of what we 
call the self is not the self at all, but is part of 
the external and material realm (prakriti). 
All our perceptions, sensations, association of 
ideas, all the activities and 'affections of the 
soul, the whole psychological mechanism, be- 
long in prakriti. We must get rid of this 
illusion, and make and keep clear the distinc- 
tion between the superficial and the deeper self. 
Prof. Gr. F. Moore has put this view concisely: 
^^The source and substance of the misery of 
life, the ground of the endless succession of re- 
births, is that the soul confounds itself, the true 
self, with the empirical self thus constituted, 
mistakenly imagining that it is actor or sufferer 
in the tragedy of existence, as though a crystal 
on which the image of a red hibiscus flower falls 
should deem that it was itself red. The salva- 
tion of the soul is the knowledge of itself as 
metaphysical, not as empirical, ego.'' 
That is to say, a man is saved not by what 



THE WAY OF SALVATION 221 

he does, not by love or worship, but by what he 
thinks, by metaphysics. In this respect the 
Sankhya agrees with the Vedanta; the dif- 
ference lies in the nature of the saving thought. 
According to the latter, he is saved who can say, 
'^I am Brahma, and Brahma does not suffer; 
Brahma is not imposed upon by the unreal 
dream world in which alone there is suffering. ' ' 
The Sankhya teaches that salvation lies in the 
perception of the absolute diversity of the soul 
from the very real world of matter and misery, 
in the clear knowledge of the fact that the soul 
does not and cannot either suffer from or act 
upon the realm of prakriti, which is wholly 
foreign to its nature. 

Gautama, or Siddhartha, the historical Bud- 
dha, was a high caste Hindu, born in the Ganges 
Valley in Northern India 624 b. c. or, accord- 
ing to another reckoning, 563 b. c. At the age 
of twenty-nine he abandoned his home, his wife 
and child, to seek salvation. Thousands of 
others in his day, led by the same craving, pur- 
sued the same course, and they seem not to have 
suffered the social condemnation which an aban- 
donment of domestic and social duty and of 
those dependent upon him would bring upon a 
man to-day. He sought illumination first in 
trance states. Disappointed, he then turned to 
the practice of self -mortification through which, 
in accordance with the belief of the time, the 
ascetic could win the favor of the gods and at- 



222 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

tain to a vision of the truth. He carried his 
austerities to the extreme limit and became the 
admired model of those who sought salvation by 
the same path. Convinced at last that the mind 
could not attain to illumination through repres- 
sion of the body and lowering of the energy of 
life, he took food, sacrificed his fame and the 
esteem of his followers and companions, and 
finally, after terrible mental struggles, discov- 
ered what he believed to be the nature, the 
cause and the way of escape from the miseries 
of life. The forty-five years that remained to 
him after the light dawned upon him as he sat 
in thought under the Bo tree, he spent in pro- 
claiming his gospel and establishing his order 
of mendicant monks. Many legends have grown 
up around him, as they always do about great 
men who are loved much because they have 
served much. The legends present interesting 
parallels to those which adoring love have woven 
around the great figure of Jesus. They may be 
read in H. C. Warren's ^^ Buddhism in Transla- 
tions,'' Harvard Oriental Series, Vol. 3, and 
they are retold in nearly every book on Bud- 
dhism. Nowhere perhaps are the main facts of 
Gautama's career more realistically presented 
in all their pathos and beauty than in H. Field- 
ing Hall's ^^Soul of a People," in the chapters 
entitled ^^He Who Found the Light," and ^^The 
Way to the Great Peace. ' ' By the magic of his 
insight and sympathy he makes Gautama to 



THE WAY OF SALVATION 223 

live before us; we feel the wondrous charm 
of the great teacher's personality and are wit- 
nesses of his beautiful death. Here too is pre- 
sented the moving story of Yasodhara, the wife, 
who in the beginning sympathized with Gau- 
tama's religious feelings and helped him on his 
way to be one of the world's saviors, not sus- 
pecting, in her devotion, that he would go away 
and leave her. It has been said that women 
are more religious than men, in that more of 
them are interested in religion to a certain ex- 
tent, but that when a man turns to it with the 
whole heart, there is always danger that he will 
carry it to an extreme. Mr. Hall recalls a con- 
versation with a woman who said of Buddha's 
wife, — 

^'Surely she was very much to be pitied be- 
cause her husband went away from her and her 
baby. Do you think that when she talked reli- 
gion with her husband, she ever thought that 
it would cause him to leave her and go away 
forever? If she had thought that, she would 
never had done as she did. A woman would 
never help anything to sever her husband from 
her, not even religion. And when after ten 
years ' waiting a baby had come to her ! Surely 
she was very much to be pitied. ' ' She did, in- 
deed, protest against being sacrificed on the 
altar of her husband's religion, but without 
avail. He came back once to see her and their 
son, when he had found the light and all the 



224 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

world loved Mm. But he was not the same man 
who went away. Indeed, he did not come home 
until all the old impulses, the old longings, which 
created the home, were dead, and he was sure 
that the desire for the sweet home life would not 
return. ^^And Yasodhara was full of despair, 
for if all the world had gained a teacher, she 
had lost a husband. So will it be forever. This 
is the difference between men and women. She 
became a nun, poor soul ! and her son — his son 
— became one of his disciples.'' 

Buddha's Eecipe for the Conquest of Sor- 
row. What was it that Gautama discovered, 
when after six years of struggle, he sat in re- 
flexion under the Bo tree? We know exactly, 
for he put his solution of the problem of exist- 
ence in systematic form, and the formula was 
memorized and has been transmitted probably 
without change to the present. There are four 
Noble Truths and an Eightfold Path. The 
first of the truths seemed to Gautama self-evi- 
dent, an axiom which no one would question, al- 
though our own thinking starts from an assump- 
tion almost precisely opposite in character. He 
states it as follows : ''Birth is suffering, age is 
suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; 
contact with what we dislike is suffering, sepa- 
ration from what we like is suffering, failure 
to attain what we crave is suffering — in brief, 
all that makes bodily existence is suffering.'^ 
The second Noble Truth is that the suffering 



THE WAY OF SALVATION 225 

which fills our life is due to the craving for 
life, for the gratification of the passions, for 
the satisfaction of our natural impulses. This 
is what causes us to be reborn. The third 
Noble Truth is the logical outcome of the sec- 
ond : the way of escape is through stilling these 
desires in whose satisfaction we deluded crea- 
tures think to find happiness, but which really 
keep us from the Great Peace and chain us to 
existence. The fourth Noble Truth is that the 
way which leads to the destruction of suffering 
and to salvation is the Noble Eightfold Path. 
This is the way of Self -conquest, a' system of in- 
tellectual and moral discipline through which we 
may destroy the fatal desires and attain emanci- 
pation of the heart, the Nirvana of present 
peace, and, when lifers fitful fever is over, final 
release from transmigration, those ^'renewed 
becomings which are only renewed sorrows.^' 
The eight steps of the Path are 

1. Eight Views 5. Eight Livelihood 

2. Eight Aspirations 6. Eight Effort 

3. Eight Speech 7. Eight Mindfulness 

4. Eight Conduct 8. Eight Eapture 

At first glance, these phrases create the im- 
pression that more is to be said for Buddhism 
as an ethical system and a way of life than as 
a philosophy and a religion, and although they 
require some explanation in order to be per- 
fectly understood, the impression is correct. 



226 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

As a matter of fact, Buddhism does produce 
lives of great beauty. Eeserving till later a 
discussion of the path, we must now, first of all, 
be perfectly clear about the Noble Truths, the 
foundations of the whole structure. 

Note first the assumption that life is essen- 
tially evil. ^^ Just this have I taught and do I 
teach," said the Buddha: ^411, and the ending 
of ill." Life is intolerable. Moreover, our 
sorrows are all bound up with our individuality 
which is itself the result of our past karma. 
Notwithstanding this gloomy presupposition, 
Mrs. T. W. Ehys Davids, in her valuable little 
book, ^^ Buddhism: A Study of the Buddhist 
Norm," has endeavored to defend Buddhism 
against the charge that it is pessimistic. All 
movements of social and religious reform, she 
thinks, start with pessimistic utterances, but no 
system is really pessimistic that points out an 
available way of escape. Now Buddhism does 
not counsel resignation to an inevitable doom: 
it urges revolt and indicates the way to victory 
through a mastery of one's inner forces and a 
conquest of one's own life. ^^With respect to 
the desirability of life taken quantitatively, or 
en bloc, Buddhism is, I repeat, frankly pessi- 
mistic. The craving for mere life or living was 
eondenmed as ignoble, or stupid, as a moral 
bondage, as one of the four mental intoxications. 
The plunge into the full tide of human life, 
which Faust was to find so interesting, was from 



THE WAY OF SALVATION 227 

their point of view, too much compact of Van- 
ity Fair, shambles and cemetery to be worth 
the plunge. ' ^ 

We must recognize, however, that just as 
Christians teach that man may be born again 
and put on a new nature, so Buddhists believe 
that when the lower life dies and the saint nears 
the end of the Eightfold Path, there comes a 
state of mind, a quality of life, and a great peace 
which is salvation. Much has been written on 
Nirvana, which means a blowing out, an extinc- 
tion, of the fire, and which, according to the logic 
of Gautama's system, ought to mean annihila- 
tion. But we must beware of drawing this con- 
clusion. Certainly, to the Buddhists them- 
selves, who have an inside view of their religion 
and who are in the apostolic succession of its 
spirit, the term Nirvana has, not a negative, but 
a positive signification. Nothing is more absurd 
than to say that because it is clear to us that 
others logically ought to feel in a certain way, 
therefore they do feel in that way. Now people 
do not go into ecstasies over mere negations, and 
nothing is more universal than the tone of vic- 
tory, the elation, the joy of the Buddhist saints. 
Mrs. Ehys Davids presents a piece of evidence 
that is pertinent and of extraordinary interest. 
In translating a book of the lives and ^' psalms '* 
of Buddhist saints, she issued ^^a referendum 
among these single-minded, devoted winners of 
the summum bonum of their faith — some three 



228 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

hundred and thirty-seven in all — inquiring what, 
in each case, the Nirvana enjoyed by the Arahat 
meant for him or her. ' ^ She found that they are 
nearly all expressions of triumph, of peace, of 
joy. As to the future, they were silent, and in 
that respect were faithful to their master. 

What Gautama himself thought about Nir- 
vana we shall never know. All that he would 
say was that at death, the saint was like an ex- 
tinct flame, ^^ whereof no one could say, the fire 
that has gone out went here or went there. ' ^ He 
said that those who taught that life continued 
after death and those who held the opposite view 
were both wrong, and finally that all such specu- 
lations were unprofitable. He was the original 
pragmatist, the strictest, most literal and con- 
sistent of all. When asked *^Why has the Ex- 
alted One not declared whether the saint exists 
after death T^ he replied, ^^ Because, brother, 
this is a matter that does not make for things 
needful to salvation, nor for that which concerns 
the holy life, nor for distaste for the world, nor 
for passionlessness, nor for cessation, nor for 
calm, nor for insight, nor for enlightenment, 
nor for Nirvana. ' ' He declared that he had but 
one message, namely, — ^^ These are our suffer- 
ings, this is the cause, this is the way of es- 
cape.'' All speculations that did not help to 
keep the feet in the eightfold path and lead to 
peace were irrelevant, and he absolutely and 
persistently refused to consider them. 



THE WAY OF SALVATION 229 

This characteristic position is elaborately set 
forth in Sermon No. 1, on ^^ Questions Which 
Tend not to Edification/' in the Majjhima 
Nikaya. It is too long to quote, for the ancient 
followers of Gautama had plenty of time and 
sermons in those days were not short. More- 
over the repetitions, which make much of their 
literature so tiresome to the modern reader, 
were almost necessary in an age when precious 
teaching was not written down but was trans- 
mitted orally from generation to generation and 
preserved only through memory. The sermon 
was inspired by the eager metaphysical curi- 
osity of an inquirer who wanted to know about 
many questions concerning which the Buddha 
had refused to speak. When urged to say 
whether the saint exists or does not exist after 
death, whether the world is or is not eternal, 
whether it is infinite, whether the soul and body 
are identical or different, and so on, the master 
replies thus: ^'It is as if a man had been 
wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poi- 
son, and his friends and companions, his rela- 
tives and kinsfolk, were to procure for him a 
physician or surgeon; and the sick man were 
to say, I will not have this arrow taken out 
until I have learnt whether the man who 
wounded me belonged to the warrior caste, or to 
the Brahman caste, or to the agricultural caste, 
or to the menial caste." Then follows a long 
list of other things which the wounded man must 



230 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

know before he will be relieved, such as the 
name, height, complexion and residence of the 
archer, the material and shape of the arrow, the 
kind of head with which it was tipped, the kind 
of feathers on the shaft, the shape and material 
of the bow. So, declared Grantama, mentioning 
the doctrines in question, the religious life does 
not depend upon any of them. What is thought 
about any of them profits not, is irrelevant. In 
the words of the late Prof. William James, all 
such questions and their answers are pragmati- 
cally valueless, for the reason that they are with- 
out practical consequences and so make no real 
difference. 

History has shown that but few in the East 
or the West have been able to rest contentedly 
in this incurious piety. The majority of earnest 
minds desire to know not only enough truth to 
enable them to do right and that they may do 
right; they want to learn for the mere joy of 
learning and knowing, and the desire grows by 
what it feeds on. The thirst for truth, once 
awakened, is insatiable, and we not only do not 
think it is unprofitable or impious, but we dare 
to believe it is a part of our love of God and 
contains in it the promise and potency of human 
progress. The modern disciples of Gautama, 
for whom their religion is a living force and not 
a mere study in archaeology, have, as we shall 
see when we come to consider Japanese Bud- 
dhism, found interesting answers to the ques- 



THE WAY OF SALVATION 231 

tions to which their master refused to reply. 
The system of Gautama is made clearer when 
it is compared with the Vedanta and Sankhya 
philosophies. All three agree that the prime 
need of men is to be saved from the ^'whirlpool 
of rebirths," from the endless series of exist- 
ences to which we are held by our karma. What 
keeps us in our unhappy state is ignorance 
rather than sin, and escape is effected through 
intellectual activity, through the knowledge of 
a saving truth. The gods cannot help, for they, 
too, are transmigrating souls, their existence in 
any of the numerous heavens being only tem- 
porary. Their position in the scale of being is 
lower and less happy than that of the emanci- 
pated saint approaching his final release. For 
the Vedantist, salvation comes with the dis- 
covery that the evil of the world together with 
the world itself is unreal, with the realization 
of the truth, temporarily obscured by the condi- 
tions of individuality, that the soul is God and 
the whole of God, and hence is above all strug- 
gle and all suffering. According to the San- 
khya, the Vedantist God, Brahman, is unreal. 
The material world is no maya, no illusion. 
Matter exists, but to the souls of men, their real 
selves, its existence is irrelevant, since it can- 
not touch or affect them in any way. Gautama 
goes further and denies the existence of the soul 
altogether. The universe is soulless, man is 
soulless, and there neither is nor ever will be a 



232 THE SYMPATHY OP EELIGIONS 

real self. Our individuality, with which all our 
sorrow is bound up, is but a temporary colloca- 
tion or compound. Neither in us nor out of us 
is there anything permanent. We are, in a 
sense, like the bubbles on the surface of a flow- 
ing stream. In our ignorance we cling to our 
individuality as something precious, and think 
to find happiness in the satisfaction of our de- 
sires. If we are to be saved, we must take the 
eightfold path which leads in the opposite di- 
rection. Through it we may hope to rise above 
hatred, care, regret, and sorrow, to attain to a 
passionless bliss, and when death comes to es- 
cape from individuality forever. 




CHAPTEE XVII 

TRANSMIGEATION AND KARMA 

NE of the greatest difficulties with 
Gautama's view is that he takes the 
doctrine of the transmigration of the 
soul, current in his time, drops the 
belief in the soul and yet clings to transmigra- 
tion. The logical problem did not escape him 
and, when pressed for an explanation, he re- 
plied with similes and illustrations which show 
marvellous ingenuity and subtlety, but do not 
satisfy. It is all very well to say that human 
lives in successive incarnations are like a row 
of lamps, each of which is kindled from the one 
before it and kindles in turn the one just after. 
If the individuality has no substance, no iden- 
tity, the doctrine of Karma seems to lose its 
moral significance. The criminal who is exe- 
cuted for his crime is not the miserable wretch 
who will expiate his wickedness in a future ex- 
istence. L. de la Vallee Poussin (^^Boud- 
dhisme: Opinions sur PHistoire de la Dog- 
matique,'' p. 55) remarks that if Gautama 
taught this, he based morality on the desire we 
may have to relieve some future representative 

233 



234 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGI0:NS 

of our acts from the necessity of paying the 
penalty of our sins. His call to Nirvana would 
have as a motive the desire to save other crea- 
tures from coming into existence in the future. 
Despite his respect for Oldenberg and Ehys 
Davids, this writer hesitates to accept their con- 
clusions. However unspeculative and even un- 
reasonable we may assume the Buddha to have 
been, he thinks it is unsafe to attribute to him 
a mass of contradictions and absurdities, that 
we should look farther for an explanation, and 
consider whether it is not possible that the in- 
congruous mixture of ideas may not be due in 
part to later disciples of Gautama. In the lat- 
ter case, what we have to explain is the super- 
position of contradictory ideas in the minds of 
the followers, instead of mental confusion in 
the leader. 

The true solution of the logical puzzle in- 
volved in keeping the idea of transmigration 
after ceasing to believe that anything exists 
which can transmigrate was given nearly forty 
years ago by T. W. Rhys Davids in his little 
manual on Buddhism, prepared for the So- 
ciety for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He 
makes the sagacious remark that if Gautama, 
although preaching the non-existence of the soul, 
was not able to give up the belief in transmigra- 
tion, it was because he, like some other seekers 
after truth who are at the same time deeply re- 
ligious, had ^^ formed his belief — ^not by working 



TRANSMIGRATION AND KARMA 235 

up from the simple to the complex, from the 
well-known to the less known, and pausing hum- 
bly where uncertainty begins — but by gradually 
rejecting those parts of his earliest creed which 
could be proved (to his mind) to be inconsistent 
with what he held to be actual fact. In such 
cases every surrender causes a wrench; each 
standpoint is defended more strongly than the 
last; and the ultimate belief is not necessarily 
more true than those which have been aban- 
doned; but only less easily proved false. It is 
natural, moreover, for the mind to resist the 
longest the disproof of those hypotheses which 
satisfy it most completely by the explanation 
they afford of otherwise inexplicable mysteries. 
Now the doctrine of transmigration, in either 
the Brahmanical or Buddhist form, is not capa- 
ble of disproof ; while it affords an explanation, 
quite complete to those who can believe it, of 
the apparent anomalies and wrongs in the dis- 
tribution of happiness or woe.'^ P. 99. 

This is a true account of the way in which most 
men reach their world view. They begin, as 
they ought, by accepting the traditions handed 
down to them from the past and sifted by their 
parents and teachers. In many cases, what is 
received is held almost unchanged through life. 
But in those who are more fortunately situated, 
the critical faculties ultimately awaken, a proc- 
ess of pruning begins which stops only when 
courage or mental energy or plasticity fails. 



236 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

What if Gautama had been more logical and 
thorough-going? The answer is clear. So far 
as Buddhism is a blessing, the result would have 
been disaster. Had Gautama drawn what 
seems to us the logical conclusion from his 
premises and given up the doctrine of transmi- 
gration, his contemporaries would not have lis- 
tened to him for a moment. Men regard as ab- 
surd and unworthy of consideration those who 
deny their moral axioms, the principles on which 
their thinking and their life are based. Had 
Gautama been more clear, had he denied what 
the men of his time never doubted, he would 
have had no influence upon them whatever. 

It is quite possible, too, as Poussin suggests, 
that he thought he had got rid of metaphysics 
because he needed to assume nothing which was 
not granted by all. **What everybody admits, 
that I admit; what the world does not admit, 
that I do not admit. '^ Like many modem men 
who affect to despise metaphysics, he had a 
metaphysics of his own, but there can be no 
doubt that he honestly tried to distinguish be- 
tween unprofitable speculations and ideas that 
are of practical value for the conduct of life. 

It is clear, then, that Gautama's gospel had a 
negative and a positive side. The former was 
set forth in his ^'Four Noble Truths'' and in 
his teaching that the universe is soulless, that 
man is soulless, that human life is evil in a 
godless world, and that our fleeting individuali- 



TEANSMIGEATION AND KARMA 237 

ties are held in the iron grip of an impersonal 
moral order. The positive side of his doctrine 
is contained in his ethical recommendations for 
the promotion of love and goodwill, for the 
conquest of passion, the victory over vain re- 
gret, and the achievement of peace. Before 
coming to the more pleasant task of examining 
this aspect of primitive Buddhism with which 
we have deep sympathy, it is necessary to dis- 
pose of the pessimistic pre-suppositions and to 
be perfectly clear about the Four Noble Truths. 
For these are not academic questions, but life 
questions, even for the great scholars, whose aim 
is truth. They are evidently influenced by their 
researches. Professor Deussen, e.g., is, as we 
have seen, a Vedantist, and Prof. T. W. Ehys 
Davids not only writes of Buddhism with great 
sympathy, but he expressly declares (** Ameri- 
can Lectures on the History of Religion, ' ' pp. 41 
and 42) that *Hhe Buddhist position is the in- 
evitable logical outcome of all discussion of the 
soul theory,'' agreeing with the Buddhist teach- 
ers that to enjoy emancipation of the heart and 
reach the highest spiritual blessings it is neces- 
sary to give up the belief in the soul, in God 
and immortality. 

The first ^^ Noble Truth" is the most impor- 
tant of all, viz., that birth is painful, old age is 
painful, unsatisfied craving is painful; in fact, 
so many of our experiences are painful that life 
may be said to be suffering. This is no isolated 



238 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

statement, but is constantly repeated and every- 
where assumed. Our western feeling is that 
this Noble Truth is not a truth at all. We are 
here dealing with original vital responses to the 
world which, like matters of taste, are not a 
subject for argument. All we can say is that 
our reaction to life is almost precisely opposite. 
We see the loveliness of infancy, childhood, ma- 
turity and ripe age. It is good to be little chil- 
dren, welcomed into loving arms; it is good to 
be boys and girls, to have the experience of 
young men and maidens, to play, as men and 
women, our part in the world's life; and good, 
very, very good also are the hours of life's aft- 
ernoon as we walk toward the sunset. Death, 
too, in its time, at the end of a finished life, is a 
welcome friend. ^^For God hath made every- 
thing beautiful in its time.'' We have learned 
to ^^ think of death not as inevitable merely, but 
as something divine ; a process of the universal 
Love, a moment in the universal life. Here is 
nothing monstrous or out of the way ; no fright- 
ful anomaly, no dispensation of wrath; but 
something of a piece with the setting sun and 
the waning moon and the falling leaf, — a part 
of the great order, a necessary link in the uni- 
versal chain which binds all being to the throne 
of God. St. Francis, who embraced all nature, 
brute and plant as well as man, with affection- 
ate sympathy, included death also, as a part of 
nature, in his infinite good will. Welcome, 



TBANSMIGEATION AND KAKMA 239 

Sister Death, he said, as he felt his end draw 
near.'^ These words, by a Christian theolo- 
gian, Dr. F. H. Hedge, awaken a response in our 
heart. We face death and life with gladness 
and a serene trust. 

"So be my passing! 

My task accomplished and the long day done, 
My wages taken and in my heart 
Some late lark singing, 
Let me be gathered to the quiet west, 
The sundown splendid and serene, 
Death." 

—W. E. Henley. 

The contrast of the western Christian atti- 
tude toward life with that expressed in the first 
of Gautama's four *^ Noble Truths'' can prob- 
ably be sufficiently realized by those who will 
read ^^The Four Intent Contemplations" 
(Warren: *^ Buddhism in Translations," pp. 
368, 369) and then consider the following prose 
poem on Life, which is famous not only for its 
beauty, but also because it so well expresses 
what might be called our first ^^ Noble Truth." 
It is true that its author was not a member of 
any religious organization and that he was in 
violent reaction against the churches. But that 
was a mere accidental result of the conditions 
that surrounded him when his mind was form- 
ing. All the sentiments of this kind which he 
so eloquently expressed were nourished in him 
in his home and could have been proclaimed, as 



240 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

they are in fact proclaimed, from countless' 
pulpits, in the name of religion. 

' ' Born of love and hope, of ecstasy and pain, 
of agony and fear, of tears and joy — dowered 
with the wealth of two united hearts — ^held in 
happy arms, with lips upon life's drifted font, 
blue-veined and fair, where perfect peace finds 
perfect form — rocked by willing feet and wooed 
to shadowy shores by siren mother singing soft 
and low — looking with wonder's wide and 
startled eyes at common things of life and day 
— taught by want and wish and contact with the 
things that touch the dimpled flesh of babes — 
lured by light and flame, and charmed by color's 
wondrous robes — learning the use of hands and 
feet, and by the love of mimicry beguiled to 
utter speech — releasing prisoned thoughts from 
crabbed and curious marks on soiled and tat- 
tered leaves — puzzling the brain with crooked 
numbers and their changing, tangled worth — 
and so through years of alternating day and 
night, until the captive grows familiar with the 
chains and walls and limitations of a life. 

*'And time runs on in sun and shade, until the 
one of all the world is wooed and won, and all 
the lore of love is taught and learned again. 
Again a home is built with the chamber wherein 
faint dreams, like cool and shadowy vales, di- 
vide the billowed hours of love. Again the 
miracle of a birth — the pain and joy, the kiss of 



TRANSMIGRATION AND KARMA 241 

welcome and the cradle-song drowning the 
drowsy prattle of a babe. 

**And then the sense of obligation and of 
wrong — pity for those who toil and weep — tears 
for the imprisoned and despised — love for the 
generous dead, and in the heart the rapture of 
a high resolve. 

^* And then ambition, with its lust of pelf and 
place and power, longing to put upon its breast 
distinction's worthless badge. Then keener 
thoughts of men, and eyes that see behind the 
smiling mask of craft — flattered no more by the 
obsequious cringe of gain and greed — knowing 
the uselessness of hoarded gold — of honor 
bought from those who charge the usury of self- 
respect — of power that only bends a coward's 
knees and forces from the lips of fear the lies 
of praise. Knowing at last the unstudied ges- 
ture of esteem, the reverent eyes made rich with 
honest thought, and holding high above all other 
things — high as hope's great throbbing star 
above the darkness of the dead — the love of wife 
and child and friend. 

*^Then locks of gray, and growing love of 
other days and half-remembered things — then 
holding withered hands of those who first held 
his, while over dim and loving eyes death softly 
presses down the lids of rest. 

**And so, locking in marriage vows his chil- 
dren's hands and crossing others on the breasts 



242 THE SYMPATHY OF RELiaiONS 

of peace, with daughters' babes upon his knees, 
the white hair mingling with the gold, he jour- 
neys on from day to day to that horizon where 
the dusk is waiting for the night. — At last, sit- 
ting by the holy hearth of home as evening's 
embers change from red to gray, he falls asleep 
within the arms of her he worshipped and 
adored, feeling upon his pallid lips love's last 
and holiest kiss." — R. G. Ingersoll. 

It is obvious that people who delight in such 
a ^^ picture of life," who when they come to lay 
their dead away read the Twenty-third Psalm 
and Tennyson's ^^ Crossing the Bar," cannot 
possibly sympathize with the despairing feeling 
about life and death on which primitive Bud' 
dhism was based. 

The second and third of Gautama's funda- 
mental principles are in character very like the 
first. They are as follows : 

*^Now this, recluses, is the noble truth con- 
cerning the origin of suffering. Verily it origi- 
nates in that craving thirst which causes the 
renewal of becomings, is accompanied by sen- 
sual delights, and seeks satisfaction now here, 
now there — ^that is to say, the craving for the 
gratification of the passions, or the craving for 
a future life, or the craving for success in this 
present life (the lust of the flesh, the lust of 
life, the pride of life). 

^^Now this, recluses, is the noble truth con- 
cerning the destruction of suffering. Verily, it 



TEANSMIGRATION AND KARMA 243 

is the destruction, in which no craving remains 
over, of this very thirst; the laying aside of, 
the getting rid of, the being free from, the har- 
boring no longer of, this thirst/^ 

That is to say, no happiness can come through 
the satisfaction of natural instincts, impulses, 
longings, desires, needs, ambitions and loves. 
The thing to do is first to become disillusioned 
and then to quiet the impulses, kill the desires 
and so attain a passionless peace. In discussing 
the ethical conceptions of Plato, we learned a 
more excellent way. It is a difficult but not 
hopeless task to organize our desires and allow 
each function to be exercised so far as it con- 
duces to the good of the whole. No primitive 
passion is to be regarded as purely evil and 
as such to be forced back into isolation or de- 
stroyed. It is rather to be made organic. The 
* insistent Dionysiac impulses" may be infused 
with higher emotions, and in this way sancti- 
fied, and made to play a part in the complex 
unity of a rich and abundant life. 

Nothing in all Buddhism is so alien to our 
feeling as the meditations which it prescribes to 
cure us of the love of life. The curious reader 
may turn to Warren's '^Buddhism in Trans- 
lations" (pages 297-300), and read the passage 
entitled *^ Beauty is but Skin-deep." The 
chances are that he will not be able to finish it. 
That men and women may cease to be attractive 
to one another and that the foundations of do- 



244 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

mesticity may be removed, the candidate for 
Nirvana is recommended to consider all the vile- 
ness and repulsiveness of the human body when 
uncared for. If the thought occurs that such 
an attitude universally accepted would depopu- 
late and ruin any country, it can only be said 
that that is true. Apologists for Buddhism, 
however, claim that much of its teaching was 
never intended for the majority of men. If you 
come to Buddha, the first question for you to de- 
cide is whether you go in for complete salvation, 
or merely desire such blessings' as come to those 
who do not aspire to be more than pious laymen, 
who would sow good deeds and reap their re- 
ward. But at most this is only a concession, 
and does not affect the claim that a life based 
on the four noble truths would be more nearly 
ideal. And here again we must clearly recog- 
nize, since ^^the sympathy of religions'' is not 
promoted by obscuring important principles, 
that our faces are turned in a different direc- 
tion. Instead of meditating on the body as a 
mass of filth, it seems to be better in every way 
to consider its wondrous beauty and to regard 
it as the temple of the Holy Spirit. More and 
more we are learning to see and rejoice in natu- 
ral beauty. Alice Freeman Palmer, called upon 
to speak to some children in a slum district, ad- 
vised them to try each day to find something 
they could admire and love, a bit of blue sky, a 
sparrow, a swaying branch, the sound of a 



TRANSMIGRATION AND KARMA 245 

church bell, etc. Not long after she saw these 
children again, and they reported their success. 
One girl, who had to serve as ^4ittle mother '^ 
to the other children when her mother went out 
to work, said that one day she nearly failed. 
Life had been hard for her and full of vexations, 
with no bright spot in it till she happened to 
notice the loveliness of the baby's hair. So, 
however it may have been in Gautama's age and 
country, surely the gospel we need is that of 
appreciation, and the view which we believe to 
be ideal is the ^^sacramental view of the world." 
The sweet home life we do not regard as second 
best, as inferior to that of the mendicant monk 
with the yellow robe. It is not as a concession 
to human weakness that we advise men and 
women to follow their higher leadings, to ac- 
cept love's guidance. 

"God hides himself within the love 
Of those whom we love best ; 
The smiles and tones that make our homes 
Are shrines by him possessed." 

One of Gautama's own countrymen, a great 
spiritual leader of this century, has expressed 
our feeling about the relation of the domestic 
and the religious life, in the following lines : ^ 

^^ At midnight the would-be ascetic announced : 
*^ ^This is the very time to give up my home 

1 Used by permission of the publishers, the Macmillan Com- 
pany. 



246 . THE SYMPATHY OF EELiaiONS 

and seek for God. Ah, who has held me so long 
in delusion here?' 

^^Grod whispered, ^I,' but the ears of the man 
were stopped. 

^^With a baby asleep at her breast lay his 
wife, peacefully sleeping on one side of the bed. 

^^The man said, ^Who are ye that have fooled 
me so long?' 

^^The voice said again, ^They are God,' but he 
heard it not. 

*^The baby cried out in its dream, nestling 
close to its mother. 

^^God commanded, ^Stop, fool, leave not thy 
home,' but still he heard not. 

^*God sighed and complained, ^Why does my 
servant wander to seek me, forsaking me?' " 
— Tag ore. ^^ The Gardener." 

There is one other point at which the Bud- 
dhist view of human life and existence touches 
the living issues of the present. Gautama 
taught a system of intellectual and ethical cul- 
ture according to which no man could save an- 
other, and no help was to be looked for from 
the gods. No man ever preached a faith of 
greater ethical sternness. He proclaimed the 
doctrine that the law of cause and effect holds 
in the moral world, that we are parts of an im- 
personal moral order, and that 

^^Our deeds still travel with us from afar; 
And what we have been makes us what we are." 



TRANSMIGRATION AND KARMA 247 

This, of course, is very fine, as far as it goes. 
The sense of responsibility is immensely deep- 
ened by a realization of the extent to which our 
destiny is in our own hands. But one of the 
most important of all truths is that isolation is 
ruinous, that nothing, not science, not art, not 
even love or religion, is at its best when it is 
separated from what is naturally in living rela- 
tions with it, and when it is cultivated alone. 
This is as true of morality as of anything else. 
Ethical culture without religion is as disap- 
pointing as religion without ethical culture. 
^* Holiness," as W. R. Inge has happily said, ^4s 
virtue rooted in the religious relation." All 
that Gautama taught about the relation of 
morality to character and happiness can be bet- 
ter taught by men who have not accepted the 
view that the universe and the body of man are 
empty and devoid of soul. Those among us 
who have made the transition from the one view 
to the other have not felt that their change was 
progress. Professor Clifford, for example, was 
reared in the faith expressed by Mrs. Browning 
in the lines, — 

"Oh, the little birds sang east and the little birds sang 
west ; 
And I smiled to think God's greatness flows around our 

incompleteness ; 
Round our restlessness his rest." 

When, later, his studies led him to feel that his 
childhood faith was untenable, and his view ap- 



248 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

proximated that of Gautama, he described the 
experience as follows: *^We have seen the sun 
spring out of an empty heaven to light up a 
soulless earth; we have felt with utter loneli- 
ness that the Great Companion is dead.'' 

Another result is to be considered, one that is 
even more important than the sadness of those 
who feel themselves orphaned, who view our 
race as a band of marooned sailors, as a com- 
pany of aspiring beings on a dead cinder 
whirled through a lifeless universe which meets 
their lower needs but mocks at their higher 
longings. All our hope of social progress, of 
the development of a finer, nobler humanity is 
involved, since it is bound up with the sense of 
the reality and worth of the human personality. 
Nearly every movement for the saving of chil- 
dren, for improving the status of women, for the 
uplifting of the weak and helpless rests at last 
upon the growing respect and reverence for per- 
sonality. This age is coming to feel that im- 
personal thinking about men and women, the 
thinking that leads to the treatment of them as 
things instead of as human beings, is sacrile- 
gious. Everywhere the great need is to per- 
sonalize human relations, the relations between 
the sexes, between parents and children, be- 
tween employers and employees, between the 
members of different races and religions. 
When, therefore, we see the exceeding stress 



TEANSMIGEATION AND KAEMA 249 

that Gautama laid upon his view that there is 
no personality, that the individuality is but a 
fleeting compound which is so far from being 
precious and deserving of reverence that it 
actually is the cause of all our sorrows, we may 
be thankful that this part of Buddhism at least 
has not succeeded in getting any hold in the 
West. 

So much had to be said in the interest of 
truth. Other precious interests, too, are at 
stake, our faith in life, in humanity, in God, and 
we imperil them when we deal in a superficial 
way with a religion which is based on their mili- 
tant denial. Moreover, it can be said, because 
the attitude of discrimination is entirely com- 
patible with the unreserved appreciation of that 
which stands criticism, and because at last we 
are really able to '^try all things and hold fast 
that which is good. ' ' Now the Noble Eightfold 
Path is a more pleasant thing to examine than 
the depressing view of life it sets out from or 
the Nirvana it leads to. For the peace which is 
no more troubled by the sorrows of the world 
is not our goal. Our ideal is love, which feels 
responsible, which is full of care, which is trou- 
bled over the imperfections remaining in the 
individual life and in the social order, which 
goes out ever in self-forgetting servi<3e, but 
which, with all its anxiety and even suffering, 
is worth all that it costs. 



250 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

The steps of the Path are as follows : 

1. Eight Views 5. Eight Livelihood 

2. Eight Aspirations 6. Eight Effort 

3. Eight Speech 7. Eight Mindfulness 

4. Eight Conduct 8. Eight Eapture. 

Hardly any of the phrases mean to us exactly 
what they signified to Gautama, and to explain 
them fully and precisely would require more 
space than is at our disposal. But the path was 
intended to lead to freedom from superstition, 
to a peaceful, pure and honest life. Gautama's 
disciples were to be kindly, open and truthful; 
to hurt no living thing; to be alert, active and 
watchful in mind ; to have a true scale of values ; 
to discipline and control all natural impulses; 
and, finally, to enjoy the noblest happiness. 

The last remark seems to contradict what was 
said before. But that is not the fault of the ex- 
position. Indeed, Buddhism, like some other 
religions, is full of paradoxes, so that it is al- 
most impossible to make a statement about it 
which will meet with universal acceptance. 
Anyone, for example, who has studied the second 
and third ^' Noble Truths, '^ namely, that the suf- 
ferings of life are caused by desire and that the 
remedy is suppression of desire, would naturally 
and logically suppose that the Buddhist ideal 
was to be without emotion. This statement has, 
indeed, often been made. But Prof. Ehys 
Davids insists that this is incorrect. He points 



TEANSMIGEATION AND KAEMA 251 

out that the second and the last steps in the 
eightfold path, that is, two of the eight, signify 
emotion, Eight Aspirations and Eight Eapture. 
Although the latter seems to include hypnotic 
trances, the point is well taken. Indeed, it is 
conclusively proved by the declarations of the 
Buddhist saints. It would be hard to find in 
literature more truly typical expressions of re- 
ligious peace and joy. Utterances such as the 
following abound : 

"There is no fire like unto passion's greed, 
No hapless cast of dice like unto hate, 
No ill that equals all that makes the self, 
Nor is there any greater bliss than peace. 
These things to know e'en as they really are, 
This is Nirvana, crown of happiness." 

"I what 'twas well to do, have done, and what 
Is very delectable, therein 
Was my delight; and thus through happiness 
Has happiness been sought after and won." 
Quoted by Mrs. Rhys Davids, " Buddhism," pp. 177, 231. 

And, finally, it must be said that, in spite of its 
defects, primitive Buddhism did include that 
which is best in all the great faiths of the world. 
It has nourished love, and where love is, God is. 
It teaches that there are ten fetters which bind 
us, and which he who enters the eightfold path 
must break, and, indeed, does break, since hav- 
ing once entered he never turns back. ^^The 
doctrine of the Final Assurance of the saints is 
a part of the Buddhist system." Gautama ex- 



252 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

plains how each fetter is to be broken. When 
contending against the fifth, which is ill-will, 
^*He lets his mind pervade one quarter of the 
world with thoughts of love, and so the second, 
and so the third, and so the fourth. And thus 
the whole wide world, above, below, around and 
everywhere, does he continue to pervade with 
heart of love, far reaching, grown great, and 
beyond measure. Just, Vasettha, as a mighty 
trumpeter makes himself heard, and that with- 
out difl&culty, towards all the four directions; 
even so of all things that have shape or form, 
there is not one that he passes by or leaves 
aside, but regards them all with mind set free 
and deep-felt love." A message like this can 
come only from a great, loving heart. And if it 
is true, and not a mere figure of speech, not an 
Oriental exaggeration, that whosoever loveth is 
born of God and knoweth God, we know that 
Gautama and the followers who caught his spirit 
had fellowship with the highest. They may not 
have had a place for God in their philosophy, 
and their view of life was unnecessarily gloomy, 
but the love which they nourished covers a mul- 
titude of errors of thought as well as sins of the 
flesh, and made them members of ^Hhe kingdom 
of God, which is righteousness, peace and joy 
in the Holy Spirit." 




CHAPTER XVIII 

BUDDHISM AS A LIVING FORCE 

E now turn to a very pleasant picture, 
that of Contemporary Buddhism at its 
best. For Buddhism is a living force, 
and not merely a dead religion. It is 
the province, not of the archaeologist, but of the 
student of the forces that are moulding the char- 
acters of men and inspiring their lives to-day. 
In Ceylon, Burma, China, and Japan are mil- 
lions of people upon whom the spirit of Gua- 
tama has descended and who strive to live by 
his law. We are now much more sure of our 
ground, for living voices speak to us. With all 
the resources of modern scholarship at our dis- 
posal, and with the disposition to be not only 
fair but generous, we are never quite sure that 
any statement of primitive Buddhism is just. 
It is not easy always to understand our con- 
temporaries with whom we have so much in 
common, and when we look across twenty-five 
centuries, and try to penetrate the veil woven 
by traditions and legends, to make due allow- 
ance for difference in circumstances, and for 
temperament, we cannot be sure that our state- 
ment preserves ^*the proportion of faith.'' 

253 



254 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

But now, fortunately, we have the books of 
those who have lived long among Buddhist peo- 
ples and so have an inside view of their reli- 
gion. Best of all, we have representatives of 
the ancient way of Gautama trying to make us 
understand their ideas, their ideals and spirit. 
There is, for instance, the valuable book, ^^The 
Soul of a People,'^ by H. Fielding Hall, who 
has lived long in Burma, and who was with the 
English expedition when the country was con- 
quered. He knows that ^^that which stirs the 
heart of a man is his religion whether he calls 
it his religion or not.'' He has loved the 
Burmese so deeply that he has caught much of 
their spirit, and he makes clear that it is still 
in large measure the spirit of the Gautama who 
said, ' ' Love each other and live in peace. ' ' He 
tells of the perplexity of the English soldiers 
at the conduct of the Buddhist priests. In the 
time of invasion, they did nothing to inspire re- 
sistance, but preached peace and love, and in- 
sisted that it is always, everywhere and under 
all circumstances, wrong to kill. With us in 
the West, religious conviction has often made 
good soldiers; witness Cromwell's Ironsides. 
But this is inconceivable to the Burmese Bud- 
dhists. Their faith '^is a terrible handicap to 
them in any fight; it delivers them bound into 
the hands of the enemy. . . . But it must never 
be forgotten that, if this faith does not assist 
the believer in defence, neither does it in of- 



BUDDHISM AS A LIVING FOECE 255 

fence. What is so terrible as a war of religion! 
There can never be a war of Buddhism. No 
ravished country has ever borne witness to the 
prowess of the followers of the Buddha ; no mur- 
dered men have poured out their blood on their 
hearthstones, killed in his name; no ruined 
women have cursed his name to high Heaven. 
He and his faith are clean of the stain of blood. 
He was the preacher of the Great Peace, of love, 
of charity, of compassion, and so clear is his 
teaching that it can never be misunderstood. 
Wars of invasion the Burmese have waged, that 
is true, in Siam, in Assam, in Pegu. They are 
but men and men will fight. If they were per- 
fect in their faith, the race would have died out 
long ago. They have fought, but never in the 
name of their faith. They have never been able 
to prostitute its teaching to their own wants. 
Whatever the Burmans have done, they have 
kept their faith pure. When they have offended 
against the laws of the Buddha they have done 
so openly. Their souls are guiltless of hypoc- 
risy — for whatever that may avail them. They 
have known the difference between good and 
evil, even if they have not always followed the 
good." P. 85. 

A study of Contemporary Buddhism by those 
whose interest is religious as well as historical 
and scientific affords some delightful surprises. 
Many have the impression that the primitive 
forms of the great religions were higher than 



256 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

the modern forms. It is doubtful if this is ever 
the case. Those who believe the first Christian 
churches were more nearly ideal than the 
churches of to-day have only to read Paul's let- 
ters to be undeceived. In his letters to the 
young church at Corinth he has to rebuke its 
members for gross immorality and for un- 
seemly conduct at the Lord's Supper, from 
which one goes away ^^ hungry and another 
drunken." There are divisions among them 
and their intelligence and spiritual discernment 
are so poorly developed that he can teach them 
only the most elementary truths. It was cer- 
tainly the conviction of the author of the Fourth 
Gospel that the Spirit of Truth would be with the 
disciples and lead them gradually into all truth. 
And history has in fact verified the prophecy 
of this great spiritual genius. Our ideas have 
changed, but the change has been in the nature 
of development. Eeligious truth is not like a 
diamond, which can be handed down from gen- 
eration to generation unchanged. Eather is it 
like a seed. Planted in the hearts and minds of 
men, it seems to die, whereas it germinates and 
produces new conceptions after its kind. So 
was it with the good seed sown by our great 
teacher in the minds of Palestinian peasants 
nineteen centuries ago, and so has it been with 
the ideas proclaimed by Gautama more than five 
centuries before his time. 

The two lines of development present .some 



BUDDHISM AS A LIVING FORCE 257 

very interesting parallels. In Buddhism, as 
in Christianity, there are present both the Prot- 
estant and the Roman Catholic types of religion. 
The Lamaism of Tibet was a surprise to the 
first Catholic missionaries, because they found 
the religion of those whom they went to con- 
vert to be, in external features at least, very like 
their own. There were ^^ shaven priests, bells 
and rosaries, images and holy water and gorge- 
ous dresses; a service with double choirs, pro- 
cessions, creeds, mystic rites and incense, with 
the laity as spectators only; the worship of the 
Virgin, and of saints and angels ; fasts, confes- 
sions and purgatory ; images and pictures, huge 
monasteries, gorgeous cathedrals, a powerful 
hierarchy, cardinal and Pope. " Masses for the 
dead are also used in China and Japan. In the 
latter country we have something very like Prot- 
estantism. In the first place, Japanese Bud- 
dhism is divided into thirteen main sects and 
forty-four sub-sects. This in itself is an evi- 
dence of vitality. Whatever lives grows and 
what grows differentiates. A branching elm 
tree is the symbol of nearly everything alive, a 
plant or animal species, a race, a language or a 
religion. Whatever is precious to men, what- 
ever they think about long and intensely, will 
in time divide them. They will draw ever finer 
distinctions and new forms of thought will arise. 
Regrettable as this may seem from the point of 
view of those who have organizations to direct, 



258 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

it is an inevitable incident of the process of de- 
velopment. 

Furthermore, the main lines of division be- 
tween sects and parties are much the same in 
the East and in the West. Modern Vishnuism 
in India, e.g., has its Calvinists and its Meth- 
odists. The former maintain the ^^ cat-hold'^ 
theory, according to which the seeker after sal- 
vation can do nothing for himself, but is like a 
kitten whose mother carries it holding it by the 
neck. The other party defends the ^' monkey'^ 
doctrine, saying that man can do something to 
promote his own salvation, that he is like the 
little monkey which co-operates with its mother 
by holding firmly to her as she moves it from 
place to place. Some of the Pure Land Sects 
of Buddhism in Japan present a remarkable 
similarity to Lutheranism. Their faith is in 
Amida Buddha, who in his infinite goodness 
provided that all who call on his name shall be 
saved, and on an overflowing gratitude to him 
for this the moral and religious life of men is to 
be based. 

The parallels are so close that efforts have 
been made to discover some relation of depend- 
ence between the two religions. These efforts 
are now generally admitted to be futile and 
hopeless. The slight relations known to exist 
between Buddhism and Christianity cannot ex- 
plain the similarity in lines of development or 
their result. We know, for instance, that the 



BUDDHISM AS A LIVING FOECE 259 

Japanese who have developed a kind of Bud- 
dhist Lutheranism had never come in contact 
with Christianity of that type. The explana- 
tion lies in a different region. 

"Out of the heart of nature rolled, 
The burdens of the Bible old." 

So in the heart of man are the issues of life 
and out of the heart of man, with substantially 
identical needs and longings, have grown the 
great historic forms of religion. As we have 
seen, primitive thought was a unity, and the 
mature thought of the world is converging to- 
ward a new unity of religious conceptions. 
What we now have before us is that in the long 
intermediate period the lines of development 
are sometimes parallel. 

Those who would get at the heart and soul of 
living Buddhism can probably not do better 
than to read very carefully an exposition by one 
of its representatives. Among the best of these 
is ^'The Religion of the Samurai: A Study of 
Zen Philosophy and Discipline in China and 
Japan," by Kaiten Nukariya, Professor of Kei- 
o-gi-jiku University and of So-to-shu Buddhist 
College, Tokyo. London: Luzac & Co., 1913. 
This author frankly acknowledges that Zen is a 
product of development and that it is not to be 
found in the fossil remains of ancient thought, 
but he rightly declares that it is not to be con- 
demned on that account. Of the two great 



260 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

schools of modern Buddhism he admits that Zen 
does not belong to the more conservative, 
Hinayanism, which is closer to the original 
teaching of Gantama, but to Mahayanism, the 
more liberal and progressive form, and he 
claims this as a merit. In his quaint but vigor- 
ous Japanese English he states his position as 
follows : 

'^Some Occidental scholars erroneously iden- 
tify Buddhism with the primitive faith of 
Hinayanism, and are inclined to call Mahaya- 
nism, a later developed faith, a degenerated 
one. If the primitive faith be called the genu- 
ine, as these scholars think, and the later devel- 
oped faith be the degenerated one, then the child 
should be called the genuine man and the 
grown-up people the degenerated ones; simi- 
larly, the primitive society must be the genuine 
and the modern civilization be the degenerated 
one. So also the earliest writings of the Old 
Testament should be genuine and the four Gos- 
pels be degenerated. . . . Zen is completely free 
from the fetters of old dogmas, dead creeds, 
and conventions of stereotyped past, that check 
the development of a religious faith and pre- 
vent the development of new truth. ' ^ P. 55. 

He thinks that those who would know Bud- 
dhism should not '^dig out the remains of Bud- 
dhist faith that existed twenty centuries ago,*' 
and which is pessimistically inclined, but turn 
their attention to the optimistic view of life 



BUDDHISM AS A LIVING FORCE 261 

which was first introduced into Japan for the 
Samurai or military class, and which has 
* ^moulded the characters of many distinguished 
soldiers. Afterwards it gradually found its 
way to palaces as well as to cottages through 
literature and art, and at last permeated every 
fibre of national life.'^ 

The following are some of the main character- 
istics of Zen : 

^*The Universe is the Scripture of Zen." 
This is the title of the third chapter, in which 
the author seeks to show that this form of Bud- 
dhism is a spiritual attitude which cannot be 
expressed in scripture. Even Gautama himself 
could not describe it. It is transmitted by con- 
tagion from life to life. There is ^'no need of 
scriptural authority for Zen, the to-days and to- 
morrows of actual life being its inspired pages. 
The Holy Writ of Zen is not parchment of palm 
leaves, but the heart and mind.'* These sen- 
tences indicate the main idea of this chapter 
which is devoted to the exposition of the convic- 
tion that ' ^ the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth 
life,'' that we must try to get at the soul of 
things, and that to do this it is necessary to di- 
vine rather than define, to observe, sympathize 
and grasp and not to depend solely on criticism 
and calculation. But Jeremiah, Jesus, and Paul 
taught this. The question is how did the Zen 
thinkers find it out ? Could they have reached it 
except by the way of experience ? And if their 



262 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

great convictions are reached along independent 
lines by people with such different traditions 
and in such unlike circumstances, is that not the 
best evidence of their truth? Savages have 
been found who could not count beyond four or 
five. But when they do develop, wherever they 
are, near the pole or under the equator, they 
eventually come to the same multiplication table. 
They cannot learn without coming upon the 
truths that lie directly in the path of their ad- 
vance. The identity of the highest Christian 
teaching with that of Zen shows that there is a 
unity of developed religious experience. 

^^ Buddha, the Universal Spirit,'^ is the title 
of the remarkable fourth chapter, which will be 
understood at once by all who see any real mean- 
ing in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. 
It is observed that as the experience of Chris- 
tians deepen they turn more and more to this 
gospel. For them the divine Word (which is 
a very inadequate translation of Logos, which 
meant also reason and wisdom) is not ^^the 
technicality of an extinct philosophy, '' but a 
reality which they have found in the depths of 
their experience and which they know of them- 
selves, and not by hearsay only, to be the light 
that lighteth every man. This is what men 
mean to-day when they speak of ^^the Eternal 
Christ.'^ 

Now by Buddha, the Zen Buddhists do not 
mean Gautama, but a universal spirit. As 



BUDDHISM AS A LIVING FOECE 263 

Emerson said that we find our life in its depths 
one with the Over-soul, they report a similar 
experience, namely, that of the ^^Enlightened 
Consciousness which is the Universal Spirit 
awakened in the human mind. This is not a 
bare intellectual insight, for it is full of beautiful 
emotions. It loves, caresses, embraces, and at 
the same time esteems all beings, being ever 
merciful to them. It has no enemies to conquer, 
no evil to fight with, but constantly finds friends 
to help, good to promote. Its warm heart beats 
in harmony with those of fellow beings. . . . 
Thus relying on our inner experience, which is 
the only direct way of knowing Buddha, we con- 
ceive Him as a Being with profound wisdom and 
boundless mercy, who loves all beings as His 
children, whom He is fostering, bringing up, 
guiding and teaching. ' ' Pp. 94, 95. 

Consider the significance and wonder of this 
statement. What does it mean, what can it 
mean, except that the Japanese Buddhists have 
found in the depths of their lives what Jeremiah 
found, what Paul was so ecstatic about, — the 
light that lighteth every man? All these inde- 
pendent observers are not reporting fancies, for 
fancies do not agree. What they profess to see 
is really there. When matters it that men on 
the other side of the world call it Buddha while 
we speak of it as the Logos, the Word, the Eter- 
nal Christ? Only savages believe that the name 
of a thing is a part of the thing. In the light of 



264 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

this truth, we understand perfectly that St. 
Augustine was right in sajdng that what is now 
called Christianity was in the ancient world, 
that the true religion has been with men from 
the beginning, although it began to be called 
Christian only after Christ came in the flesh. 
And with the Zen disciples of Gautama in our 
minds, we may gladly assent to Justin Martyr's 
famous saying that ^^They who have lived with 
the Logos are Christians even though they have 
been considered atheists. '^ 

The fifth chapter on ^^The Nature of Man'' 
is very beautiful. First comes a consideration 
of the four theories of human nature, namely, 
that men are good by nature, that they are bad, 
that they are partly good and partly bad, and 
that they are neither good nor bad, but morally 
blank and that their character is determined 
by circumstances. All of these are rejected and 
the theory advanced that men are Buddha-na- 
tured, and that the difference between them is a 
matter of development. The bad are undevel- 
oped, the immature. The divine nature that 
lies implicit within them has not been awak- 
ened. ^^The bad are the good in the eggy the 
good are the bad on the wing." An action is 
good in proportion to the extent of the interests 
it serves. ^' An action is good when it promotes 
the interests of an individual or a family; bet- 
ter when it promotes those of a district or a 
country; best when it promotes those of the 



BUDDHISM AS A LIVING FORCE 265 

whole world. . . . So-called bad persons, who 
are properly designated as ^ small persons' by 
Chinese and Japanese scholars, express their 
Buddha-nature to a small extent mostly within 
their own doors, while so-called good persons, 
or 'great persons,' as the Oriental scholars call 
them, actualize their Buddha-nature to a large 
extent in the whole sphere of a country, or the 
whole earth." Pp. 109, 110. This entirely ac- 
cords with the highest ethical conception yet 
reached by the West, namely, of goodness as the 
amplest expression of human nature, as fulness 
of life through organization. 

This view of man as the child of the perfect, 
as a partaker of the divine nature, is not differ- 
ent from the highest Christian view. Indeed, as 
we read the words of the Japanese professor, 
we seem to be hearing what we have long known, 
expressed in a different language. And if we 
ask him what the Zenists think of the universal 
spirit, he replies that 

**Some people named Him Absolute, as He is 
all light, all hope, all mercy, and all wisdom; 
some. Heaven, as He is high and enlightened; 
some, God, as He is sacred and mysterious; 
some. Truth, as He is true to Himself; some, 
Buddha, as He is free from illusion ; some. Cre- 
ator, as He is the creative force immanent in 
the universe ; some. Path, as He is the Way we 
must follow; some. Unknowable, as He is be- 
yond relative knowledge; some. Self, as He is 



266 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

the Self of individual selves. All these names 
are applied to one Being, whom we designate by 
the name of Universal Life or Spirit." P. 95. 

But he warns us to remember that this divine 
reality is ^^too sublime to be named after a tra- 
ditional deity, too spiritual to be symbolized 
by human art, too full of life to be formulated 
in terms of mechanical science, too free to be 
rationalized by intellectual philosophy, too uni- 
versal to be perceived by the bodily senses ; but 
everybody can feel its irresistible power, its 
invisible presence, and touch its heart and soul 
within himself. ' ^ . . . ^ ^ Thus Buddha is unnam- 
able, indescribable, and indefinable, but we pro- 
visionally call him Buddha. ' ' Pp. 78, 79. 

Has any Christian theologian or prophet 
expressed in a better or clearer way the highest 
that thought has yet reached? Is not this view 
practically identical with that of Goethe as 
stated in Faust's reply to Margaret when the 
simple girl asks him if he believed in God? 

'^Him who dare name 
And who proclaim, 
Him I believe? 
Who that can feel, 
His heart can steel, 
To say: I believe him not? 
The AU-embracer, 
All-sustainer, 
Holds and sustains he not 
Thee, me, himself? 
Lifts not the Heaven its dome above? 



BUDDHISM AS A LIVING FORCE 267 

Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us lie? 

And beaming tenderly with looks of love, 

Climb not the everlasting stars on high? 

Do I not gaze into thine eyes? 

Nature's impenetrable agencies, 

Are they not thronging on thy heart and brain, 

Viewless, or visible to mortal ken, 

Around thee weaving their mysterious chain? 

Fill thence thy heart, how large soever it be ; 

And in the feeling when thou utterly art blest, 

Then call it what thou wilt, — 

Call it Bliss! Heart! Love! God! 

I have no name for it ! 

'Tis feeling all; 

Name is but sound and smoke 

Enclouding Heaven's glow." 

In a paragraph entitled ^^Our Conception of 
Buddha is not Final," the author provides for 
the future. He declares that as our concep- 
tions surpass those of the men of the past, so 
to those who will come after us new and higher 
visions will be revealed. ^^We should always 
bear in mind that the world is alive, and chang- 
ing, and moving. It goes on to disclose a new 
phase, or add a new truth. . . . Therefore Uni- 
versal Life may in the future possibly unfold 
its new spiritual content, yet unknown to us. 
. . . Thus to believe in Buddha is to be content 
and thankful for the grace of His, and to hope 
for the infinite unfoldment of His glories in 
man. ' ^ 

The Optimism of Zen. The history of Bud- 
dhism throws a brilliant light on the nature of 



268 THE SYMPATHY OF EELiaiONS 

huinan nature. For its transformation shows 
that even if men accept a pessimistic and atheis- 
tic system of intellectual and ethical culture, 
they will inevitably make of it in time an opti- 
mistic theism or pantheism. Nothing is more 
curious than the way in which Zen interprets the 
fact of change. Gautama and his contempo- 
raries, like many in other lands and centuries, 
have seen in that constant change without and 
within which nature presents only a reason for 
gloom and the basis for a philosophy of despair. 
They grieve because youth is fleeting and mourn 
because the morning lasts for but a few hours. 
Since all is impermanent, nothing is worth 
while — that is the argument. But the modern 
disciples of Gautama ask — ^^What would you 
have? You lament the brief life of the morn- 
ing-glory. Do you really like glass flowers bet- 
ter?'^ It is just because there is change that 
there is hope. And so the Japanese professor 
names his paragraphs ^ ' The World in the Mak- 
ing," ^*The Progress and Hope of Life,'^ ^^The 
Betterment of Life,'' and tells us in glowing 
sentences that man is yet in his cradle, that the 
golden age is ahead of us, that ^4ife is growing 
richer and nobler step by step and becoming 
more and more hopeful as we advance in the 
Way of Buddha." The aim of life, says this 
Gospel according to the Japanese, ^4s to bring 
out man's inborn light of Buddha-nature to illu- 
mine the world, to realize the universal brother- 



BUDDHISM AS A LIVING FORCE 269 

hood of all sentient beings, to attain to Enlight- 
enment, and to enjoy peace and joy to which 
Universal Spirit leads us/' 

Surely one who can give us back our highest 
thought so well does not need conversion. His 
religion at its best is identical with ours at our 
best. That is, it is Religion. He is as far from 
the pessimism of primitive Buddhism as we 
are from those conceptions of our ancestors 
which have cast such darkness on the world. 
He and his people have found the secret, the 
spiritual attitude from which the good life flows. 
He has taken life by the right handle. Think 
once more of the *'Four Noble Truths" of Gau- 
tama and then ponder these beautiful words of 
his modern disciple : 

*^Life is full of anxieties, pains, struggles, 
brutalities, disappointments and calamities. 
"We love life, however, not only for its smooth- 
ness, but for its roughness; not only for its 
pleasure, but for its pain ; not only for its hope, 
but for its fear ; not only for its flowers, but for 
its frost and snow. . . . Adversity is salt to our 
lives, as it keeps them from corruption, no mat- 
ter how bitter to the taste it may be. It is the 
best stimulus to body and mind, since it brings 
forth latent energy that may remain dormant 
but for it. . . . Troubles and difficulties call 
forth our divine force which lies deeper than 
our ordinary faculties, and which we never be- 
fore dreamed we possessed. How can we sup- 



270 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

pose that we, the children of Buddha, are put at 
the mercy of petty troubles, or intended to be 
crushed by obstacles? . . . Difficulties are no 
match for the optimist, who does not fly from 
them, but welcomes them. He has a mental 
prism which can separate the insipid white light 
of existence into bright hues. He has a mental 
alchemy by which he can produce golden in- 
struction out of the dross of failure. He has 
a spiritual magic which makes the nectar of joy 
out of the tears of sorrow. He has a clairvoy- 
ant eye that can perceive the existence of hope 
through the iron walls of despair.". . . 
^^ Therefore we must practically sow optimism, 
and habitually nourish it in order to reap the 
blissful fruit of Enlightenment.'^ Pp. 172^174. 
Zen, or Dhyana, is also a method of medita- 
tion, of letting bygones be bygones, of leaving 
behind vain regrets, of keeping the mind buoy- 
ant and serene, of coming to conscious union 
with the Universal Life, of reaching that Nir- 
vana which is realizing that ^Hhe world is the 
holy temple of Buddha.'' One more quotation 
from our spiritual kinsman across the sea may 
be given, one which every religious mind will 
understand. Indeed, if for Buddha other 
names for the same reality be substituted, names 
more familiar to us, God, Christ, Over-Soul, 
Holy Spirit, the passage might be taken for a 
selection from some Christian writing. ^*We 
must purge out all the stains in our hearts, obey- 



BUDDHISM AS A LIVING FORCE 271 

ing Buddha's command audible in the inner- 
most self of ours. It is the great mercy of His 
that, however sinful, superstitious, wayward, 
and thoughtless, we still have a light within us 
which is divine in its nature. '^ P. 169. This 
* innermost wisdom, pure and divine, the Mind 
of Buddha, is the divine light, the inner heaven, 
the key to all moral treasures, the centre of 
thought and consciousness, the source of all in- 
fluence and power, the seat of kindness, justice, 
sympathy, impartial love, humanity, and mercy, 
the measure of aU things. When this innermost 
wisdom is fully awakened, we are able to realize 
that each and everyone of us is identical in 
spirit, in essence, in nature, with the universal 
life or Buddha, that each ever lives face to face 
with Buddha, that each is beset by the abun- 
dant grace of the Blessed One, that He arouses 
his moral nature, that He opens his spiritual 
eyes, that He unfolds his new capacity, that He 
appoints his mission, and that life is not an 
ocean of birth, disease, old age and death, nor 
the vale of tears, but the holy temple of Buddha, 
the Pure Land, where he can enjoy the bliss of 
Nirvana. '^ Pp. 133, 134. 

The ^^ sympathy of religions'' thus turns out 
to be the sympathy of men who realize that the 
great religions have something more in common 
than rites, ceremonies and ecclesiastical orders 
and organizations, that each religion at its best 
is not merely like unto, but is identical with, 



272 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

every other religion at its best. The clear per- 
ception of this truth means much for the peace 
and unity of the world. A young man once 
said, *^The trouble with the philosophers is that 
they never get anywhere/' and the same thing 
has often been said of the theologians. There 
is much to explain and to excuse this attitude, 
but it is none the less wrong. Those who are 
abreast of the best scholarship of to-day, and 
who have insight enough to interpret properly 
its results, see clearly the great lines of religious 
thought converging toward conceptions which 
are to inspire and sustain the spiritual life of 
the race through the unknown future. The 
light which was from the beginning, the Light of 
Asia, the Light of the World, the light that 
light eth every man, shines ever more brightly, 
and the shadows begin to flee away. 




CHAPTER XIX 

HINDUISM AT ITS BEST 

lEDANTISM and Primitive Buddhism 
are essentially thought paths to sal- 
vation. The latter, it is true, involved 
some ethical elements, but it made a 
considerable demand upon the intelligence of 
those who sought in it a way of escape from 
constant rebirth, from that sorrowful experi- 
ence which the individual human life involves. 
It was a philosophy the first aim of which was 
to destroy the ^'delusion of being a self." The 
Vedanta is pure metaphysics, and no one can 
get help from it who cannot convince himself 
that the world is an illusion, that his sufferings 
are unreal, and that he is God and the whole of 
God. 

These requirements can be met by compara- 
tively few, even in India, and it is not strange, 
therefore, that there, as elsewhere, the vast ma- 
jority of men have taken the way of religion, 
of devotional faith and love. Lofty summits 
have been reached by those who have sought 
the highest through insight and the sublimation 
of religious experience. It is with these that 

273 



274 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

we are now concerned and not with the super- 
stitions which they have left below them as they 
climbed. 

The Vishnuite, or Vaishnava, religion seems 
to have been founded by Krishna Vasudeva, 
who was a popular hero before he came to be 
regarded as an incarnation of Vishnu. His 
legend is interesting rather than morally edi- 
fying, at least when judged by western stand- 
ards. He called his God Bhagavat, the Ador- 
able One. His followers, the Bhagavatas, be- 
lieved their deity to be infinite, eternal and full 
of grace. Salvation was perpetual bliss in his 
presence. No religion long retains its original 
purity. It is changed by those who receive it, 
for it must make terms with what is already in 
their minds. Moreover, its disciples have to 
define their position in relation to other sys- 
tems, and in such case each is influenced by the 
other. It was not long, therefore, before the 
Krishna religion adopted important ideas from 
the Sankhya-Yoga philosophy with which it was 
logically incompatible. Then it was captured 
by the Brahmanic priesthood, who induced the 
Bhagavatas to believe that the Adorable One 
was identical with Vishnu and who accepted 
Krishna himself as one of his incarnations. 
This device has been used for ages by the Brah- 
mans, and it is very effective from the point of 
view of the interests of their class. For the 
worshippers nothing is really changed but some 



HINDUISM AT ITS BEST 275 

names, while they have the advantages of being 
a caste recognized by the priesthood, which in 
this way gains and keeps the support of all 
classes, all castes, all religions. No transfer of 
loyalty is required, the local and aboriginal 
deities being simply identified with one of the 
greater gods recognized by all. 

There are other points of view, however, from 
which this seemingly happy plan of spreading 
the mantle of Hinduism over even the most 
savage superstitions of wild tribes may be re- 
garded. It gives standing and official recogni- 
tion to what should be outgrown and left behind 
as quickly as possible. Moreover, in partner- 
ships between religions of two stages of culture, 
almost the whole advantage generally accrues to 
the lower. The downpuU is stronger than the 
uplift. The higher interpretation which the 
cultivated place upon crude beliefs and rites is 
ignored by those who have a living interest in 
them, and it is not of much importance to those 
who have reached a more advanced stage of de- 
velopment. 

In fact, all high values are difficult to main- 
tain. In his ^^ Social Psychology," Prof. E. A. 
Eoss points out that ^'just as bodies of differ- 
ent temperature interchange heat, so classes on 
different levels interchange characteristics, and 
to a certain extent the superior borrows from 
the inferior. Slang or argot invades literature ; 
darky songs win the entree to the drawing- 



276 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

room,'^ etc. ^^ Whites in contact with abo- 
rigines let down. Certain of the first trans- 
Alleghany settlers become so Indianized as to 
wear a buckskin dress, marry a squaw, and let 
the scalp-lock grow.'^ That the down-pull is 
very strong is shown by the fact that these 
^^ squaw-men '^ often slip down not only to the 
customs and habits of wild tribes, but to their 
moral and social ideals as well. Those who suc- 
cessfully meet the danger of losing their higher 
culture and descending several rungs on the 
ladder of civilization do so only through an 
intense and almost intolerant conservatism. It 
is in this way, and in this way alone that, as Miss 
Schreiner has shown, the Boer has for two cen- 
turies maintained the civilization which he took 
with him into the wilds of South Africa. *^ You 
say he still wears the little short jacket of his 
great-great-grandfather 's great-grandfather ? 
Yes, and had he given it up, it would have been 
to wear none at all! You say he stuck gener- 
ation after generation to the straight-backed 
elbow chair and the hard backed sofa of his 
forefathers? Yes, and had he given them up, 
it would have been to adopt nothing more aes- 
thetic ; it would have been to sit upon the floor ! 
. . . You say he had only one book, and clung 
to it with a passion that was almost idolatry? 
Yes, but had he given up that one book, it could 
not have been to fill his library with the world ^s 
literature ; it would have been to have no litera- 



HINDUISM AT ITS BEST 277 

ture at all ! That one book, which he painfully 
spelled through, and so mightily treasured, was 
his only link with the world's great stream of 
thought and knowledge ... his one possible 
inlet to the higher spiritual and intellectual life 
of the race. ... If the Boer had forsaken his 
Bible, we should have found him to-day a sav- 
age, lower than the Bantus about him, because 
decayed. In nothing has he so shown his 
strength as in clinging to it. 

*^To one who wisely studies the history of the 
African Boer, nothing is more pathetic than this 
strange, fierce adherence to the past. That cry, 
which unceasingly for generations has rung out 
from the Boer woman's elbow chair, ^My chil- 
dren, never forget you are white men! Do al- 
ways as you have seen your father and mother 
do!' was no cry of a weak conservatism, fear- 
ful of change; it was the embodiment of the 
passionate determination of a great, little peo- 
ple, not to lose the little it possessed, and so 
sink in the scale of being. To laugh at the con- 
servatism of the Boer is to laugh at the man 
who, floating above a whirlpool, clings fiercely 
with one hand to the only outstretching rock he 
can reach, and who will not relax his hold on it 
by one finger till he has found something firmer 
to grasp." Quoted by Eoss, ^^ Social Psychol- 
ogy," pp. 152, 153. 

The English settlers in America realized the 
barbarizing influence of the wilderness, and 



278 THE SYMPATHY OF EELiaiONS 

struggled to ^^ avoid a breach of continuity in 
the higher spiritual life of the community/' 
To this end they strove to keep up their connec- 
tion with the mother country and founded 
schools and colleges in the new land. How they 
understood their danger and sought to meet it 
may be read in their statement of their purpose 
in founding Harvard College : ^^ After God had 
carried us safe to New England, and wee had 
builded our houses, provided necessities for our 
livelihood, rear'd convenient places for God's 
worship, and settled the civill government : One 
of the next things we longed for and looked 
after was to advance learning and perpetuate it 
to posterity ; dreading to leave an illiterate min- 
istery to the churches, when our present minis- 
ters shall lie in the dust." New England^ s 
First Fruits y in respect of the progress of learn- 
ing , in the Colledge at Cambridge, in Massachu- 
setts-hay, London, 1643. 

While the Brahmans have managed to retain 
their privileged position in this way, namely, by 
promulgating the theory that the gods of the 
native religions are forms of one supreme God, 
or that they are incarnations of Vishnu, pure 
religion has gained nothing by the compromise, 
since for *^the uninstructed worshipper his gods 
remain what they were before this benevolent 
assimilation.'' A further consequence is that 
there is created an ^^ impression of simplicity 
and unity which is widely remote from the truth, 



HINDUISM AT ITS BEST 279 

and Vishnuism and Sivaism are actually vast 
amorphous conglomerates of the most hetero- 
geneous elements." To give an account of the 
many discordant varieties of religion that have 
been incorporated into Vishnuism, or of the 
hundreds of sects which continually arise, 
flourish and decay within it, is not part of our 
plan, and such a study would be without profit, 
for no one can remember, even for a little while, 
such a series of dissolving views. The gene- 
alogy of what is noblest in it seems to be as 
follows : — 

The Adorable One, the supreme God of 
Krishna, was identified with Vishnu, who was 
originally */a much more civilized god than Siva, 
as becomes the gods of more civilized tribes or 
regions.'^ Vishnu is worshipped in his incar- 
nations in Krishna, Eama, and twenty-one oth- 
ers, and there is one more incarnation yet to 
come. The theory is that at each appearance of 
the divine the world is made better, but that as 
the inspiration fades out of life, men gradually 
sink back into wickedness, so that new avataras, 
or descents of the god into the world, become 
necessary. Eama, like Krishna, was a hero and 
founder of a sect, before he was regarded as 
Vishnu in the flesh. The tendency that raised 
these men to the godhead may be observed to- 
day in India in the extravagant respect which 
certain sects pay to their Gurus. Once such a 
teacher or master is chosen, the disciples make 



280 THE SYMPATHY OF RELiaiONS 

no reservations in their devotion, holding freely 
at his disposal their property, their persons, 
their all. 

The Bhagavata religion is of unknown date, 
but certainly is as old as the fourth century b. c. 
Its best is much like our best. It proclaims a 
personal God, who is to be loved with the whole 
heart, who is to be served in moral ways, and 
who gives eternal happiness to his people. The 
book of this religion is the Bhagavad-Gita, which 
is a poem of love to God. In it are to be found 
very beautiful sentiments and expressions of 
lofty faith, of which the following are among 
the best: 

^^That worshipper of mine who cherishes no 
hate against any being, but is full only of friend- 
liness and compassion, who is free from self- 
seeking and from the illusion of self, to whom 
sorrow and joy are the same, always patient and 
content, given to meditation, self-controlled, 
resolute, with heart and mind set on me, and 
loves me — ^he is dear to me. He before whom 
none are disquieted, and who is disquieted be- 
fore none, free from elation and vexation, fear 
and disquiet — he also is dear to me. . . . He 
who does all his works for my sake, who is 
wholly devoted to me, who loves me, who is free 
from attachment to earthly things, and without 
hate to any being, he, son of Pandu, enters 
into me.'' Translation of G. F. Moore, History 
of Religions, p. 333. 



HINDUISM AT ITS BEST 281 

The reader who is delighted with such selec- 
tions and turns from the books in which they 
are quoted to the Gita itself is more or less dis- 
appointed. For he finds there, as in other sa- 
cred books, much that is on a lower level. He 
finds also a mixture of thought, confused and 
contradictory ideas, in one passage the concep- 
tion of a personal God, in another that of an 
impersonal world-soul, and in a third the identi- 
fication of the two. The doctrine of personal 
immortality is proclaimed and also that of ab- 
sorption of the personality into the absolute. 
The Higher Critics have a problem here. Part 
of the book appears to date from the second cen- 
tury B. c. and part from the second century a. d,, 
but it is still uncertain whether the contradic- 
tions in it are due to its being an expression of 
a transitional stage of religious thought or to 
the attempt to combine conceptions and ideas 
that are really incapable of being harmonized. 

This Bhagavata religion of impassioned and 
personal love of the one God, this mystical and 
ethical faith, in which the worshipper sought 
communion with the Adorable One, was, accord- 
ing to Evelyn Underbill, one of '^Life's false 
starts. It was a reaction against the arid per- 
formances of the religious intellect, a premature 
movement towards levels on which the human 
mind was still too weak to dwell. Thwarted and 
finally captured by the philosophizing tendency 
of Brahmanism, against which it was in origin 



282 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

directed, it sank to a static and intellectnalistic 
system of vaguely pantheistic piety/' *'The 
Mystic Way," p. 22. Other influences, how- 
ever, conspired to produce this result. This re- 
ligion in its early form was that of a class, 
namely, the warriors. Moreover, it was only 
for the wealthy. Official Vaishnavism is costly, 
and this is one reason for the spread of Sivaism, 
which is cheap enough for the poor. (See G. 0. 
Grierson, ^^Encycl. of Eeligion and Ethics," 
Article, Bhakti-Marga.) The consequence was 
that by the eleventh century a. d. it was at a low 
ebb and had almost disappeared. 

At this discouraging time, however, religion 
was ^^ new-given," and India rediscovered faith 
and love. The greatest religious revolution in 
her history began, and ''sl wave of passionate 
devotion, demanding as its object a personal and 
attainable God, swept over the land, under the 
influence of three great spiritual teachers and 
their disciples." Nothing in the spiritual his- 
tory of mankind is comparable to it except the 
beginning of Christianity. Nor is the impulse 
yet spent. Its influence is felt to-day by at 
least a hundred and fifty million lives. The 
first of the leaders of this revival was Eamanuja, 
whose name is borne by one of the many sects 
into which Vishnuism is divided. As we have 
seen, the Upanishads contain expressions of 
theistic and pantheistic tendencies as well as 
the ideas systematized by Sankara in the Ve- 



HINDUISM AT ITS BEST 283 

danta. These were developed by Eamanuja in 
such a way that the result was not unlike Chris- 
tianity in certain fundamental respects. The 
impersonal Brahman was rejected for a per- 
sonal and gracious God, human souls were inde- 
structible, and the world was not illusion, but 
what Goethe called it, the living visible garment 
of God. 

"In Being's floods, in Action's storm, 
I walk and work, above, beneath. 
Work and weave in endless motion! 
Birth and Death, 
An infinite ocean; 
A seizing and giving 
The fire of the Living; 
'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply. 
And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by." 

The Ramanujas teach that the human body 
is the temple of God, that man has communion 
with the highest in his own heart, that increas- 
ing likeness to God and eternal happiness in the 
divine presence are his destiny. Involuntary 
sin may be expiated by ceremonial acts, but vol- 
untary sin, intentional wrong doing, of which the 
Ramanujas think there is very little among 
them, is forgiven those who turn to the Ador- 
able One in faith and love. 

The likeness to Christianity is so striking that 
attempts have been made to show that Bhakti- 
Marga is our own religion in Indian form. And, 
indeed, Christianity has been in India from very 



284 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

early times. That Ramanuja may have been in- 
fluenced by it, directly or indirectly, is not im- 
possible. That Ramananda had some acquaint- 
ance with it is not improbable, and in the case 
of Kabir there is little doubt. There is no way 
to decide this question definitely at the present 
time. Moreover, the matter is not of very great 
importance, since it is generally admitted that 
the religion of love to and communion with a 
personal God of love and grace is indigenous in 
India, however greatly it may have been rein- 
forced by influences from Christian sources. 
The great significance of this movement, accord- 
ing to Evelyn Underbill, lies in the fact that in 
the Vaishnava religion of Bhakti-marga, Hindu 
mysticism has turned away from the *^ negative 
path,^' which history had proved to be only a 
blind alley, and assumed the ^^ outgoing and 
fruitful, world-renewing attitude of Love.'^ 
Those who have taken the ^^main road of Brah- 
min theology '^ have not reached a more abun- 
dant life, but have ended in a Quietism, ^^an 
other-worldly specialism, so complete as to in- 
hibit all action, feeling, thought: a condition 
which escapes from love no less than hate, from 
joy no less than pain; an absorption into the 
Absolute which involves the obliteration of 
everything that we know as personality. '' The 
religion of the West is, in part, a mysticism, but 
it is active and positive. Those who have found 
what Harnack calls the secret of Christianity, 



HINDUISM AT ITS BEST 285 

who live the ^^ eternal life in the midst of time/' 
seek the development of personality, not escape 
from it, and for them *Hhe world assumes not 
the character of illusion but the character of 
sacrament; and spirit finds Spirit in the lilies 
of the field, no less than in the Unknowable 
Abyss.*' ^^The Mystic Way/' Ch. IL 




CHAPTER XX 

HINDUISM AT ITS BEST: KABIB 

NE of the greatest of the leaders of 
this mystical religion of love was 
Kabir, 1440-1518. He was an unlet- 
tered man of lowly origin, by occupa- 
tion a weaver, a disciple of Eamananda, a mu- 
sician and poet, the founder of a religious sect 
and indirectly the creator of a state. The 
Sikhs were at first a religious community, a 
militant sect based on the teaching of Kabir, 
and in the course of an interesting history they 
have become a nation. Like all great mystics, 
Kabir is hard to classify. He appears to have 
been a Mohammedan, a Sufi, and is not unlike 
the great Persian mystics, Sadi, Hafiz, and 
Jalalu 'ddin Eumi. Yet he is one of the greatest 
exponents of the religious ideas of Eamananda 
and Bhakti-Marga, and at times speaks lan- 
guage familiar to Christian ears. Such men 
are the cosmopolitans of religion. They are 
original, and find the truth where the great seers 
and prophets of the race have always found it ; 
they report what they see and know, not what 
they have learned from other men. Kabir 's 

286 



HINDUISM AT ITS BEST: KABIB 287 

poems have recently been published, and they 
show that his insight and religious enthusiasm 
did not impair his sanity. Many of them are 
of extraordinary beauty and express in an Ori- 
ental way some of the finest inspirations of the 
West. It is true that the East is often frank 
where we are reserved, and with our feelings 
of propriety we are perplexed by the frequent 
use of passionate human love as a symbol of 
devotion to the divine. We are not surprised 
to learn that ' ' this movement, on its lower and 
popular side, gave support to the most erotic 
and least desirable aspects of the Krishna cult,'^ 
so that one who realizes how much of good there 
is in it, feels it necessary to warn us that this 
fact ^^ ought not to prejudice our judgment of 
its higher and purer aspect/' No faith ought 
to be condemned for its by-products, but it is 
only the part of a justifiable prudence and of 
loyalty to the truth to note them if experience 
has shown them to be a danger. 

A few selections will serve better than any 
description to give an impression of this mystic 
poet and religious genius. The following quo- 
tations are from '^ Songs of Kabir.^' * 

Servant, where dost thou seek Me? 
Lo! I am beside thee. 

1 am neither in temple nor in mosque : 
I am neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash : 

1 These selections from " Songs of Kabir " are used by per- 
mission of the publishers, the Macmillan Company. 



288 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

Neither am I in rites and ceremonies, nor in Yoga and re- 
nunciation. 

If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me: thou 
shalt meet Me in a moment of time. 

Kabir says, "0 Sadhu! God is the breath of all breath." 

There is nothing but water at the holy bathing places ; and 
I know that they are useless, for I have bathed in them. 

The images are all lifeless, they cannot speak; I know, for 
I have cried aloud to them. — XLII. 

Further quotations of this kind are unneces- 
sary to explain Kabir 's fate. However great 
their tolerance for the eccentricities of an ac- 
knowledged saint, the Brahman priesthood could 
not endure an opposition that threatened their 
very existence, and the too clear sighted poet 
was driven into exile. 

He proclaims the folly of those who go to the 
wilderness to find God, and of those who seek 
to draw near to him by ascetic severities, or by 
dyeing their garments instead of dyeing their 
*' minds in the colors of love.'' If we can but 
realize it, we do not need to leave home, for our 
common daily life is divine. 

"He is dear to me indeed who can call back the wanderer 
to his home. In the home is the true union, in the home is 
enjoyment of life: why should I forsake my home and 
wander in the forest? If Brahma helps me to realize truth, 
verily I will find both bondage and deliverance in home. 

Kabir says: "The home is the abiding place; in the 
home is reality; the home helps to attain Him Who is real. 
So stay where you are, and all things shall come to you in 
time." — XL. 



HINDUISM AT ITS BEST: KABIR 289 

We can reach the goal without crossing the road. — LXXVI. 
Your Lord is near: yet you are climbing the palm-tree to 
seek Him.— XXI. 

Some of the poems are magnificent psalms, 
No. XVII ranks with the most glorious religious 
poetry of the world. Kabir exults in a view 
that is the exact opposite of Gautama's first 
'* Noble Truth.'' The universe to him is the 
expression of love and joy. 

The earth is His joy; His joy is the sky; 

His joy is in the flashing of the sun and the moon; 

His joy is the beginning, the middle, and the end; 

His joy is eyes, darkness, and light. 

Oceans and waves are His joy: . . . and life and death, 
union and separation, are all His plays of joy ! 

His play the land and water, the whole universe! 

His play the earth and the sky ! 

In play is the Creation spread out, in play it is established. 
The whole world, says Kabir, rests in His play, yet 
still the Player remains unknown. — LXXXII. 

For him the world is love and play and joy 
and music. A wonderful lotus blooms at its 
heart. ^^ Music is all around it, and there the 
heart partakes of the joy of the Infinite Sea." 
*^Look within, and behold how the moonbeams 
of that Hidden One shine in you." 

In order to realize the splendor of this poet's 
view, one should re-read the 19th, 139th, the 
103rd and 104th psalms, and immediately after 
ponder such poems as numbers 16, 17, 76 and 82 
in this collection. 



290 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

A few lines from No. 17 ^ will give some idea 
of these expressions of vision and of love. 

The light of the sun, the moon, and the stars shines bright : 
^The melody of love swells forth, and the rhythm of love's 

detachment beats the time. 
Day and night, the chorus of music fills the heavens; and 

Kabir says, 
"My Beloved One gleams like the lightning flash in the 

sky." 
Do you know how the moments perform their adoration? 
Waving its row of lamps, the universe sings in worship 

day and night, 
There are the hidden banner and the secret canopy: 
There the sound of the unseen bells is heard. 
Kabir says : " There adoration never ceases ; there the Lord 

of the Universe sitteth on His throne." 



Behold what wonderful rest is in the Supreme Spirit ! and 

he enjoys it, who makes himself meet for it. 
Held by the cords of love, the swing of the Ocean of Joy 

sways to and fro ; and a mighty sound breaks forth in 

song. 
See what a lotus blooms there without water! and Kabir 

says, 
" My heart's bee drinks its nectar." 



There falls the rhythmic beat of life and death; 
Rapture wells forth, and all space is radiant with light. 
There the Unstruck Music is sounded; it is the music of 

the love of the three worlds. 
There millions of lamps of sun and of moon are burning; 
There the drum beats, and the lover swings in play. 

1 From " Songs of Kabir." Used by permission of the pub- 
lishers, the Macmillan Company. 



HINDUISM AT ITS BEST: KABIR 291 

There love-songs resound, and light rains in showers; and 
the worshipper is entranced in the taste of the heav- 
enly nectar. 

Look upon life and death; there is no separation between 
them. 

The right hand and the left hand are one and the same. 

Kabir says : " There the wise man is speechless ; for this 
truth may never be found in Vedas or in books.'' 

It is not possible here to give quotations suf- 
ficient to illustrate the different aspects of 
Kabir 's thought and to show the great sanity of 
his nature. He escapes the danger of excessive 
emotionalism, yet he does not inhumanly sacri- 
fice the most precious of interests on the altar 
of metaphysics. He has the wisdom to see that 
life is the expression, not of a few tendencies 
only, but of many, and the unity he seeks is one 
that includes them all. There are many poems 
which express a sense of intimate communion 
with God, that *^union-in-separateness of God 
and the soul," familiar to the experience of 
Jews and Christians, but which the Hindus have 
found it so hard to attain. In reading Kabir 
one realizes that when religious feeling comes 
from a sufficient depth and is associated with 
thought of adequate elevation it is not sectarian, 
but universal and human. He has given expres- 
sion to the great intuitions, longings and needs 
of the heart, and some of his sentences seem to 
be but paraphrases of passages from the psalms 
and prophecies of Israel. ^ ^ As the hart panteth 
after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after 



292 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

thee, God. My soul thirsteth for God/^ He 
for whom these words are spirit and life will 
have no difficulty in recognizing the same spirit 
in Kabir's words: ^^As the night-bird Chakor 
gazes all night at the moon: so Thou art my 
Lord and I am Thy servant. From the begin- 
ning until the ending of time, there is love be- 
tween Thee and me : and how shall such love be 
extinguished? Kabir says: ^As the river en- 
ters into the ocean, so my heart touches Thee.' '^ 
XXXIV. 

Poem LVn sings of ^^that Word from which 
the Universe springeth.'^ The conception is 
closely akin to that of the first chapter of the 
Fourth Gospel. There are two possible ways of 
accounting for this fact : the poet has come under 
Christian influences or he has discovered for 
himself ^Hhe light that lighteth every man.'' 
And even if the former rather than the latter be 
the true explanation, it is significant that the 
insight and feeling of this Mohammedan-Hindu 
seer are so naturally and so well expressed in 
forms which were created to clothe Greek and 
Christian spiritual thought. 




CHAPTER XXI 

HINDUISM AT ITS BEST: BABINDBANATH TAGOBE 

EMPTING though it is to linger over 
the poems of so great a spiritual ge- 
nius as Kabir, we shall do well, if we 
wish to know Hinduism at its best, to 
turn from him to its greatest living representa- 
tive. Nothing could be more to our purpose 
than the exposition of Tagore, who is remark- 
able in several ways and whose achievements 
have won him recognition and distinction in the 
West. He is a musician and poet of extraordi- 
nary influence in his own country, and all his 
writings have a deep human interest. Some of 
the poems in the collection entitled ^^The Cres- 
cent Moon'' are of exquisite beauty. ^^Gitan- 
jali" is a record of some of the poet's conversa- 
tions with the Over-Soul. In them is the spirit 
of a fine, brave, sweet humanity. One may be 
given as an indication of the way the poet faces 
life and death. ^ 

^^I have got my leave. Bid me farewell, my 
brothers! I bow to you all and take my de- 

1 Used by permission of the publishers, the Macmillan Com- 
pany. 

293 



294 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

partnre. Here I give back the keys of my door 
— and I give up all claims to my house. I only 
ask for last kind words from you. We were 
neighbors for long, but I received more than I 
could give. Now the day has dawned and the 
lamp that lit my dark corner is out. A sum- 
mons has come and I am ready for my journey. 
At this time of my parting, wish me good luck, 
my friends ! The sky is flushed with the dawn 
and my path lies beautiful. 

^^Ask not what I have to take with me there. 
I start on my journey with empty hands and 
expectant heart. 

^^I shall put on my wedding garland. Mine 
is not the red-brown dress of the traveller, and 
though there are dangers on the way I have no 
fear in my mind. 

*^The evening star will come out when my 
voyage is done and the plaintive notes of the 
twilight melodies be struck from the King's 
gateway. 

^^I was not aware of the moment when I first 
crossed the threshold of this life. What was the 
power that made me open out into this vast 
mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight? 

^^When in the morning I looked upon the 
light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger 
in this world, that the inscrutable without name 
and form had taken me in its arms in the form 
of my own mother. 

*'Even so, in death the same unknown will ap- 



EABINDEANATH TAGORE 295 

pear as ever known to me. And because I love 
this life, I know I shall love death as well. 

^^The child cries out when from the right 
breast the mother takes it away, in the very next 
moment to find in the left one its consolation." 

Is not this the Indian equivalent of Tenny- 
son's ^'Crossing the Bar"? What follows is 
equally beautiful : 

^^When I give up the helm, I know that the 
time has come for thee to take it. And now I 
am eager to die into the deathless. . . . Let all 
my songs gather together their diverse strains 
into a single current and flow to a sea of silence 
in one salutation to thee. Like a flock of home- 
sick cranes flying night and day back to their 
mountain nests, let all my life take its voyage to 
its eternal home in one salutation to thee." 

There is one book, however, which was written 
by Tagore with the express purpose of bringing 
western readers ^4nto touch with the ancient 
spirit of India as revealed in the sacred texts 
and in the life of to-day." For this work the 
writer has been prepared by his religious train- 
ing and spiritual experience as well as by his 
scholarship. He was reared in a home in which 
the Upanishads were not mere ^^ mummied 
specimens of human thought and aspiration and 
as such possessing only a retrospective and 
archaeological interest," but they were used in 
daily worship and were obviously the inspira- 
tion of his father, the Maharshi Debendranath 



296 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

Tagore, a man of great force of character and 
saintly life. He pleads with us to remember 
that ^^AU the great utterances of man have 
to be judged not by the letter but by the spirit — 
the spirit which unfolds itself with the growth 
of life in history,'' and he reminds us that only 
in this way can we get to know the real meaning 
of Christianity. What is important is the re- 
ligion of to-day, and not merely that of the past. 
In the preface to this book, ^^Sadhana,''^ he ex- 
plains that his treatment of the religion of India 
is not historical or technical, but vital, since to 
miss the spirit of it, as many do, is to miss all. 
The contrasting spiritual attitudes of the East 
and the West are set forth by Tagore with great 
clearness. He shows that for us nature means 
the physical world, that is, nature with man left 
out. We emphasize the difference between the 
natural and the human. For Indian thought 
this break does not exist, but nature and human 
nature are like bud and blossom, and there is a 
deep feeling of kinship and unbroken relation- 
ship with all that is. India seeks not to subdue 
nature but to realize man's harmony with it. 
The result, so far as she succeeds, is not power 
but joy in spiritual vision and sense of vital 
union. The Oriental feels the need of realizing 
his place in the infinite, and never quite forgets 

1 The sentences quoted from " Sadhana," in this chapter and 
the paragraph at the chapter's end are reprinted with the per- 
missioB pf the puhlishers, the Macmillan Co. 



RABINDRANATH TAGORE 297 

the great frame in which our life is set. In the 
pursuit of her ideal of perfection and the en- 
deavor to find peace in a sense of harmony with 
the Infinite, India has neglected, as Tagore sees 
and frankly acknowledges, other things which 
she ought to have regarded. Living the contem- 
plative life too exclusively, she has paid little 
attention to organization and to the use of the 
resources of the earth, and so has not achieved 
worldly success. He also perceives that what 
is needed is not for Hindus to give up their 
ideals or for Europeans and Americans to sur- 
render theirs, but that ^^It is best for the com- 
merce of the spirit that people differently situ- 
ated should bring their products into the mar- 
ket of humanity, each of which is complemen- 
tary and necessary to the others." P. 12. 

Tagore 's use of the Upanishads is very in- 
structive. He fixes upon the sentences which 
express his high and beautiful faith, and ignores 
the rest. The passages on which the Vedanta 
and Sankhya systems and Buddhism are based, 
he seems not to see. He denies that the Brahma 
of India is an abstraction or that the conception 
of the unreality of the world is an essential part 
of the philosophy of the Upanishads. ^^It may 
be,'' he says, '^that such a doctrine has been and 
still is prevalent with a section of our country- 
men. But this is certainly not in accord with 
the pervading spirit of the Indian mind." He 
declares that the God-conscious man of the 



298 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

Upanishads is marked by his deep feeling of 
adoration, that the spirit of Brahma is the light 
and life of all, — the spirit of love and joy. 
What is characteristic of the Indian attitude 
is the glad recognition of our kindred with the 
All, a conscious unity in which there is no break. 
^^They did not recognize any essential opposi- 
tion between life and death and they said with 
absolute assurance, ^It is life that is death.' 
They saluted with the same serenity of glad- 
ness ^life in its aspect of appearing and in its 
aspect of departure.' " For him the key note 
of the Upanishads is, not the words of the Bri- 
hadaranyaka, ^^ Joyless are these worlds," but 
Prano virat, ^^Life is immense." 

According to Tagore, who evidently believes 
sincerely that he teaches nothing that is not 
taught, implicitly at least, in the Upanishads, 
man's chief need is to find a truth that will unify 
his life, reconcile its contradictions, harmonize 
its knowledge, love and action, and bring order 
into the chaos of his desires. ^^ Facts are many, 
but the truth is one." Where can man find the 
truth that will illumine his whole life ? Where, 
indeed, except in himself? For a man to come 
to himself, means to attain the ^^ absolute cer- 
tainty that essentially we are spirit." As the 
chick must break through the shell which cov- 
ered it so long, but is not really a part of its 
life, so man must break through his ignorance 
and the sin which is but ^^the blurring of the 



RABINDEANATH TAGOEE 299 

truth that hides the purity of our conscious- 
ness,'^ and allow the spirit of truth and love 
which wells up within to have its way with him. 
The King stands without and knocks. If in- 
vited, he will enter as a guest, but he will not 
use compulsion or do violence to the human 
spirit, so that the only fellowship we can have 
with him is in freedom and love. All that Ta- 
gore has said in his chapter on Soul Conscious- 
ness might be preached as a sermon in a Chris- 
tian church from the text, — ' ' Behold, I stand at 
the door and knock : if any man hear my voice 
and open the door, I will come in to him, and will 
sup with him, and he with me. ' ' 

One of the functions of science is to enable us 
to master and do away with evils, both old and 
new; and one of the services which religion ren- 
ders is that of so interpreting the evils which 
are still unconquered that we may be able not 
only to endure them but to turn them to good 
account, and even to transmute necessary suffer- 
ing into joy. In his treatment of the problem 
of evil, Tagore has done more than set forth 
the best in Hinduism; he has shown what the 
experience of the ages has proved to be the 
wisest and noblest attitude toward the darker 
side of life. Indeed, his thought is obviously 
*' advanced thought; it is so like the highest 
interpretations which Christian thinkers place 
upon their own religion that some are unable 
to believe that the truth he teaches has not been 



300 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

derived from Christian sources. Thus Mr. 
Leslie Johnson, in the Quarterly Review for 
January, 1914, points out that Tagore's father 
was one of the founders of the Brahma-Samaj, 
the formation of which was *^ largely the result 
of the preaching of Christian missions, working 
itself out partly in an attempt to remove the 
most crying abuses in Hinduism. In its devel- 
opment, it was very strongly influenced by west- 
ern writers and in its final form presents most 
of the features of the best Victorian Unitarian- 
ism as shown, for instance, by Martineau.^' 
This writer attempts to show that the probabil- 
ity of Christian influence is so great that it is 
* impossible to treat Mr. Tagore's utterances 
as prophecies coming from another sphere to 
occidental minds that have been groping after 
the same truth. He is, at any rate to a large 
extent, a member of our religious world.'' 

As to the Brahma-Samaj, it is to be said that 
it has already divided into three branches, and 
that Tagore was reared in the section which, if 
not anti-Christian, is, or at least aspires to be, 
purely Hindu. Then, the poet himself believes 
that in his noblest utterances he is an exponent 
of Hinduism, and it is as unprofitable as it is 
ungenerous to try to prove him in the wrong. 
He may very well be m the right. Eeligion is 
in one respect like geology. When Agassiz 
studied the glaciers, he came on ^^the imposing 
truth that the geological processes of past aeons 



RABINDRANATH TAGORE 301 

which have made the earth are still going on 
at the present day, that they have never ceased, 
that they will never cease.'' So, those who 
study religion, using both the historical and com- 
parative methods, have discovered ^^the truth 
that the process of religion-making has never 
ceased and that the same forces which shaped 
religion in ancient Egypt are still operative in 
our midst and continue to mold our own religion 
to-day/^ J. H. Breasted, *^ Development of Re- 
ligion and Thought in Ancient Egypt,'' p. XI. 
We do not think it strange that men of science, 
who study the physical order, arrive at the same 
conclusions. Is it not natural, a thing to be 
expected and even inevitable, that our percep- 
tions of the moral and spiritual order should 
show a closer agreement in proportion as they 
increase in clearness, purity and depth? 

Tagore's philosophy of evil is not only very 
beautiful, but, so far as it goes, it is also pro- 
foundly true. He declares that pain is inci- 
dental; it *4s not an end in itself as joy is. 
To meet with it is to know that it has no part 
in the true permanence of creation. It is what 
error is in our intellectual life. To go through 
the history of the development of science is to 
go through the maze of mistakes it made cur- 
rent at different times. Yet no one really be- 
lieves that science is the one perfect mode of 
disseminating mistakes." There are some who 
get so close to the evils of the world that they 



302 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

can see nothing else. To them a river is all 
banks, and in a towing rope which binds a boat 
they see only the bondage, and fail to consider 
that it is by means of the rope that the boat is 
drawn forward. The real *^ wonder is not that 
there should be obstacles and suffering in this 
world, but that there should be law and order, 
beauty and joy, goodness and love.'' The child 
in learning to walk stumbles and falls, yet the 
main thing is not these failures but ^Hhe impe- 
tus of joy'' by which it is sustained. The fact 
is that ^^man does not really believe in evil, just 
as he cannot believe that violin strings have 
been purposely made to create the exquisite tor- 
ture of discordant notes, though by the aid of 
statistics it can be mathematically proved that 
the probability of discord is far greater than 
that of harmony, and for one who can play the 
violin there are thousands who cannot. The 
potentiality of perfection outweighs actual con- 
tradictions." 

The world does not take its pessimists seri- 
ously and cannot, for *4ife itself is optimistic: 
it wants to go on . . . and we have a faith 
which no individual instances can shake, that 
the direction of humanity is from evil to good. ' ' 
When reading such expressions, we are con- 
scious that what they bring to us is a fresh 
vision of reality, and it is difficult to say how 
much the writer really owes to the scriptures 
which he loves so much. This noble teaching is 



RABINDEANATH TAGORE 303 

not, we feel, Hindu, but human. The mode of 
approach and the form of expression are Ori- 
ental, but the content is a truth of which we 
have independent vision. 

In the exposition of his conception of good- 
ness, Tagore is strikingly like Socrates and 
Plato. He declares that when we do wrong we 
do not express ourselves, but are for the time 
the servants of some impulse or passion. The 
will, which is what the whole man wants when 
he comes to himself and realizes what he means 
and intends, is good. The moral conflict is that 
of the lesser, fractional man with the larger and 
more complete man. To live the life of good- 
ness is to take into account all our relationships 
and not a few only. Moral vision is simply a 
comprehensive view of the wholeness of life. 
Our real life is in families, states and human- 
ity, and is one with God's life, and we never 
learn to live victoriously until we realize ' ' that 
in us we have the world-man who is immortal, 
who is not afraid of death or sufferings, and 
who looks upon pain as only the other side of 




CHAPTER XXII 

INDIA'S CONTBIBUTION TO THE SPIBITUAL LIFE 
OF HUMANITY 

OCEPTING Tagore as representative 
of the highest thought and deepest 
spiritual life of India, let us consider 
what is central in his message. It is 
a truth so noble and so beautiful that it seems 
at first impossible to take it seriously. Yet it is 
only what we have heard from the greatest seers 
of all time. At the heart and source of things, 
Tagore tells us, is a spirit, a life, which is 
also love, beauty and joy. He delights to quote 
from the Hindu scriptures such sayings as the 
following : 

*Trom joy does spring all this creation, by joy is it 
maintained, towards joy does it progress, and into joy does 
it enter. 

''For He manifests Himself in forms which His joy as- 
sumes." 

"Verily from the everlasting joy do all objects have their 
birth.'' 

"The immortal being manifests himself in joy- form." 

"Who could have breathed or moved if the sky were not 
filled with joy, with love?" 

304 



INDIA'S CONTRIBUTION 305 

The tone of such passages seems to us so en- 
tirely opposite to that of the Vedanta and primi- 
tive Buddhism that we ask if it is possible that 
we may be mistaken and have failed to under- 
stand those philosophies. To this question Ta- 
gore replies with an emphatic affirmative. If 
we suppose that the annihilation of the self has 
been held by India to be the supreme goal of 
humanity, it is, he says, because we have not 
really understood. He reminds us that *4n an 
unknown language the words are tyrannically 
prominent, '^ and that those ^^who are cursed 
with literal minds'' and seek to comprehend a 
religion by a study of texts, while ignoring the 
living beings who are incarnations of its spirit, 
are like *'the unfortunate ones who are always 
busy with their nets and neglect the fishing. ' ' 

Buddha, he declares, preached with fervor the 
ideal of the selflessness which is love and not 
the destruction of anything that is positive and 
real. Our individuality is like a seed which is 
not to remain as it is, but to die into a larger 
life. Our self is like a lamp which holds oil only 
that it may give it up in light. So, Buddha said, 
Let the light shine, and culminate in the Nir- 
vana of love. He discovered that the secret of 
life was to reverse the direction of effort, to re- 
place self-seeking by that expression of the real 
self which is love and joy in loving. 

Whether this is an adequate interpretation of 
original Buddhism is an historical question of 



306 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

more or less importance. What really interests 
living men is whether it is or is not a true read- 
ing of life. Is the universe the expression of 
physical force and necessity, or has it its source 
in a great, loving Life ? Both Tagore and Kabir 
support the latter view. They explicitly assert 
and emphasize a truth which lies implicit in the 
Christian faith, but on which we have placed 
but little emphasis. God is love — this is the 
great message of the New Testament; but we 
have not sufficiently realized that where there 
is loving life there is also joy and beauty. 
Kabir feels this deeply and never tires of telling 
us that creation is God's play, that the universe 
is joy, that it is full of music. Tagore supports 
him in two wonderful chapters on ' ' Eealization 
in Love,'^ and ^^The Eealization of Beauty.'^ 

Why is this truth hid from so many of us? 
Tagore 's answer is that we are like men who 
are concerned with the physics of the printer's 
and bookmaker's art and have failed to read 
the story. But as there is a meaning in the 
printed words, so there is a meaning in the 
physical universe, although to read this is not 
the business of natural science. Another rea- 
son is our spiritual immaturity. We have not 
arrived at love, and ^^Want of love is a degree 
of callousness ; for love is the perfection of con- 
sciousness. We do not love because we do not 
comprehend, or rather we do not comprehend 
because we do not love. For love is the ultimate 



INDIA'S CONTRIBUTION 307 

meaning of everything around us. It is not a 
mere sentiment ; it is truth ; it is the joy that is 
at the root of all creation. ' ' We can never have 
a true view of men when we wish to exploit them, 
to use them as means for our ends. We can 
never know them till we love them. ^*As with 
man, so with this universe. When we look at 
the world through the veil of our desires we 
make it frail and narrow, and fail to perceive 
its full truth. Of course, it is obvious that the 
world serves us and fulfils our needs, but our 
relation to it does not end there. ^' Emerson 
has told us this. Nature, he says, is Commodity, 
but it is also Beauty, and it always speaks of 
Spirit, and ^^the essential nature of things is 
beauty and joy.'' 

Although we have had glimpses of this truth 
and for generations have repeated the word of 
the psalmist that the Lord rejoices in all his 
works, we have not taken it greatly to heart. 
Our main practical interest has been to control 
natural forces for our benefit, and our religious 
faith has been in a God of righteousness. 
Amongst us there are, indeed, some who feel 
the passion for truth, and who have the convic- 
tion that when they find it they have come into 
contact with reality and drawn nearer to God. 
But few have seen or properly appreciated the 
fact that beauty, as well as truth and goodness, 
is one aspect of the divine. Tagore avows his 
acceptance of the doctrine of the Vaishnava re- 



308 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

ligion that beauty is God's wooing of our heart, 
that the ultimate meaning of creation is not the 
display of power, but love, beauty and joy. He 
thinks that as our intellect has made great con- 
quests, as it has discovered vast regions of 
truth which it did not create, so will it be with 
our sense of beauty. For as truth is every- 
where and everything is a possible object of our 
knowledge, so beauty is omnipresent and there- 
fore everything is capable of giving us joy. As 
mathematicians find that the infinite has a struc- 
ture and science discovers an order in the world ; 
as the moral agent striving for good reveals the 
ideality of the world; and as religion seeks to 
bring in the kingdom which in a real sense has 
*^been prepared from the foundation of the 
world;'' so the poets and seers declare that 
** Beauty is one of the fundamental attributes of 
God, which he has impressed upon his world. I 
hold it to be a quality residing in the objects, 
and not imparted to them by the observer. I 
hold Beauty to be, like Truth and Goodness, an 
end in itself, for God's creation." W. E. Inge, 
^^ Faith and Its Psychology," 203. 

To many excellent people this may seem to 
be only the fancy of imaginative natures, yet 
they may be wrong and what the prophets and 
men of vision report that they see may really be 
there. Indeed, it is not strange that apprecia- 
tion of truth and righteousness should precede 



INDIA'S CONTRIBUTION 309 

the perception of beauty. The two values first 
named have the right of way. Man's existence 
has long been so precarious that he has had 
little time or opportunity to concern himself 
with truths that did not bear on his survival. 
Moreover, the animal instincts, impulses and de- 
sires with which nature has endowed him have 
been so imperious, so hard to control and to 
adjust to the needs of social life, that the great 
questions have naturally been those of right and 
wrong and the supreme need has been for a God 
of righteousness. Even now a large part of the 
race is so absorbed in the elementary tasks of 
making a living and keeping the commandments 
that the intellectual and aesthetic life is some- 
thing of a luxury. But must it always be so? 
Suppose that our daily labor does not exhaust 
us, and that we are consecrated to the right, 
what then? May we not find that Kabir, Ta- 
gore, and our own seer Emerson are right in 
saying that our life is ^^ embosomed in beauty, '^ 
that its source is in joy and love and that into 
joy and love it may always be retranslated? 

In an article entitled ^^ Twenty Minutes of 
Reality" Atlantic Monthly, May, 1916, the re- 
porter of the vision says that it ^^ seemed as 
though beauty and joy were more at the heart 
of Reality than an over-anxious morality. It 
was a little as though (to transpose the quota- 
tion), 



310 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

I slept, and dreamed that life was duty ; 
I woke, and found that life was beauty.^ 

Perhaps at such times of illumination there is 
no need to worry over sin, for one is so trans- 
ported by the beauty of humanity and so poured 
out in love toward every human being, that sin 
becomes almost impossible. Perhaps duty may 
merely point the way. When one arrives at 
one's destination it would be absurd to go back 
and reconsult the guide-post. . . . Perhaps this 
may be the great difference between the saints 
and the Puritans. Both are agreed that good- 
ness is the means to the end, but the saints have 
passed on to the end and entered into the real- 
ization, and are happy. (One of the most en- 
dearing attributes of saints of a certain type 
was — or rather is, for one refuses to believe 
that saints are all of the past — their childlike 
gaiety, which can proceed only from a happy 
and trustful heart.) The Puritan, on the other 
hand, has stuck fast in the means — is still wor- 
rying over the guide-posts, and is distrustful 
and over-anxious. '^ 

When a man in our practically-minded West 
has a vision of love, beauty and joy at the heart 
of things, he is liable to have his sanity brought 
in question. It takes some courage to avow the 
conviction that Wordsworth and Stevenson saw 
truly, and it is not surprising to find that the 

1 Altered from a poem by Ellen Sturgis Hooper. 



INDIA'S CONTRIBUTION 311 

editors of the magazine submitted the article 
mentioned above to a distinguished physician 
for comment. His report is a sign of the new 
age now dawning. He declares that he finds 
nothing pathological in the condition of the 
writer, nothing to discredit his vision. On the 
other hand, he does think that '^Ordinary per- 
ception is untrue, because it has become blinded 
by over-use. . . . Our ordinary prosaic percep- 
tions show strong evidence of morbidity. . . • 
A keener delight in perception is notoriously a 
mark of health." A rising tide of vitality 
^^ might well crack the crust of habit and show 
us reality. In my belief this is just what hap- 
pened." 

After all, then, Hegel may have been right in 
saying that the beautiful is essentially the spir- 
itual making itself known sensuously, and Plato 
may not have been wrong in his conviction that 
beauty is ^^a joyous witness within us to the 
kinship of the human spirit with that source of 
spiritual life from which whatever is fair and 
noble in the world proceeds. ' ' The great values 
belong together, and truth, beauty and goodness 
are of one family. No member of this family 
can be neglected by any nation except at its 
peril. Social disorganization is the inevitable 
result of injustice. Neglect of science and of 
education means inefficiency and failure in com- 
petition with nations which have a deeper sense 
of the importance and the sacredness of truth. 



312 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

So, too, as Eev, W. E. Inge has happily said, 
*^inany of the unsatisfactory features of our 
civilization are due to the fact that we see noth- 
ing wrong in unnecessary ugliness/' and they 
cannot be done away until we learn to appreciate 
beauty and do justice to the aesthetic as well as 
to the moral aspects of reality. The reaction 
of the sense of beauty has ^'a distinctive qual- 
ity, the loss of which cannot be made good from 
any other source. The mind that is dominated 
by perception of the beautiful, and by the love 
of it which can hardly be dissociated from this 
perception, will certainly carry its habit and its 
method into every part of life. Among a really 
artistic people we find a joyful desire to do 
everything well and appropriately. What has 
to be done is done imaginatively; what has to 
be spoken or made is spoken or made fittingly, 
lovingly, beautifully. ' ' Op. cit., pp. 48, 206. 

As these values belong together, and, though 
distinguishable, are not really separate, but 
are aspects of one reality, of a perfection, a 
goodness ^^ which is wider than the ethical 
ideal," so it is only together that they can be 
effectively cultivated. Morality apart from art 
and science and a wide culture becomes repul- 
sive, fanatical and cruel. Isolation always 
means distortion. Much of the art of our time 
deserves the contemptuous disregard which it 
receives, for it has lost touch with the life it 
should adorn. The business of art is to help us 



INDIA'S CONTKIBUTION 313 

to see what without it we cannot see, to select 
and bring out the latent loveliness in things, and 
the best tendencies in men, to represent to the 
senses that which we are made to love and for 
loving which we are nobler and happier. But 
the only artists that can do this are those who 
have the religious spirit of faith, hope and love 
and the insight that love gives. The greatest 
technical skill cannot save from failure the 
cynics, the misanthropists, those who ^^ despise 
life, hope for nothing, love nobody." As we 
learn to interpret our experience wisely, we shall 
find that to isolate any value, whether goodness, 
beauty or truth, tends to make it valueless. Nor 
is such isolation necessary. All good things are 
ours. When we separate them we do violence to 
them and injure ourselves. We perceive with 
increasing clearness '^the truth and beauty of 
the good, the goodness and beauty of the truth, 
and the truth and goodness of the beautiful." 
Ever more profoundly do we feel the holiness of 
beauty and the beauty of holiness. Inexpres- 
sibly attractive to us are the lives that are loyal 
to the highest, and as we contemplate them it is 
with the wish that we may be like them, and with 
the prayer, uttered or unexpressed, ^^May the 
beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." 

It thus appears that Hinduism at its best 
has a very important contribution to make to 
our spiritual life. It brings home to us a truth 
which we theoretically admit, but which we do 



314 THE SYMPATHY OF BELIGIONS 

not deeply feel. We have been prevented from 
seeing what India has seen by the very work we 
have had to do. According to the first chapter 
of Genesis, when God created man he com- 
manded him to replenish the earth and subdue 
and have dominion over it. In the fulfilment of 
this command the best energies of the western 
nations have been spent. The establishment 
and maintenance of the family and the conquest 
of nature, — in achieving these ends we have 
realized the need of righteousness and the value 
of truth. We have been very serious and prac- 
tical, but in the struggle with nature we have 
developed a sense of separation from that of 
which we are part. India, on the other hand, 
has neglected the interests we care for and has 
remained poor and unsuccessful. But in the 
minds of her greatest children she has perceived 
what has escaped us, for she knows that nature 
and man are included in one great truth. She 
intuitively knows that at the heart of things 
there is not only a God of righteousness and a 
Holy Spirit which leads into all truth, but that 
love is there also and that where love is beauty 
is and joy is, for these three are one. She de- 
clares that despite war and suffering and all 
the ^^ unredeemed opposites whose unity faith 
sees,^' the universe is a love story, that when 
our eyes become clear we shall see that the truth 
of things is far more beautiful than anything we 
have ever dared to believe. 



INDIA'S CONTRIBUTION 315 

Christianity at its best has deeply felt that 
truth, righteousness and love are rooted in eter- 
nity. India, through Kabir and Tagore, ex- 
presses her high faith that beauty and joy also 
rest upon the same foundation and have their 
source in God. And both understand that man 's 
longing for all these values is the response of 
his mind and heart and spiritual nature to the 
call which God makes to him through them. 
Man's love and prayer and upward striving and 
God's wooing of his heart are but two different 
aspects of one ascending life, a fellowship of the 
human and divine. Higher than this, thought 
has not yet reached, and with its clear statement 
by Tagore our exposition of India's religious 
achievement may fitly close : 

^^ Beauty is God's wooing of our heart; it can 
have no other purpose. It tells us everywhere 
that the display of power is not the ultimate 
meaning of creation ; wherever there is a bit of 
color, a note of song, a grace of form, there 
comes the call for our love. ... It is a call to us, 
but not a command. It seeks for love in us, and, 
love can never be had by compulsion. Compul- 
sion is not indeed the final appeal to man, but joy 
is. And joy is everywhere; it is in the earth's 
green covering of grass ; in the blue serenity of 
the sky ; in the reckless exuberance of spring ; in 
the severe abstinence of grey winter ; in the liv- 
ing flesh that animates our bodily frame ; in the 
perfect poise of the human figure, noble and up- 



316 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

right ; in living ; in the exercise of all our pow- 
ers ; in the acquisition of knowledge ; in fighting 
evils; in dying for gains we never can share. 
Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, un- 
necessary; nay, it very often contradicts the 
most peremptory behests of necessity. It exists 
to show that the bonds of law can only be ex- 
plained by love; they are like body and soul. 
Joy is the realization of the truth of oneness, 
the oneness of our soul with the world and of 
the world-soul with the supreme lover/' Sad- 
hana, p. 116. 



PAET V 

THE BEGINNINGS OF EELIGION INTEE- 
PEETED IN THE LIGHT OF ITS HIGH- 
EST DEVELOPMENT 




CHAPTER XXIII 

THE CHILDHOOD OF KELIGION 

E have thus traced the majestic curve 
of humanity's religious thought. It 
began in the unity of a crude concep- 
tion of man and the world ; in its de- 
velopment it has produced great systems whose 
adherents were more conscious of their differ- 
ences than of what they held in common; and 
now we see the lines of growth converging to- 
wards a new unity of purified conceptions which 
express the essentials of the spiritual life. 
Through the long centuries men have been en- 
larging, criticising, and revising their ideas and 
comparing their insight into spiritual things. 
They have been learning to distinguish between 
that in their experience of the divine which is 
fundamental and that which is merely local and 
accessory. At last we can say that 

"Wherever through the ages rise 
The altars of self-sacrifice, 
Where love its arms hath opened wide, 
Or man for man has calmly died, 
We see the same white wings outspread, 
That hovered o'er the Master^s head; 
319 



320 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

And in all lands beneath the sun 
The heart afiSrmeth, ^ Love is one/ " 

Whittier. 

We now see clearly that there is one Eeligion 
behind all the creeds and in all the religions of 
the world. The spiritual life of humanity is 
one life, and between the yearnings and crude 
guesses of primitive men and the purified faith 
and noble philosophy of the present there is 
a rational connection. The germ of the most 
elevated thought and the purest love was pres- 
ent in the beginning, and the relation of the 
lower stages to the higher is that of bud and 
blossom or flower and fruit. Each stage in the 
religious life of mankind has its value, its im- 
portance, and its right to exist, and no religion 
is beneath notice. Evolution thus puts a mean- 
ing into human history. But, as Eev. John W. 
Chadwick has said, we must not interpret our 
doctrine of progress in such a way as to dis- 
franchise the countless generations of the past. 
Childhood is a preparation for maturity, no 
doubt, but it is also for itself. Every stage of 
personal and racial development has its peculiar 
good. Those who have gone before us had life 
in themselves and they rejoiced in it with great 
joy and gladness. ^^ Because men are men and 
hearts are hearts, in earlier as in later times, 
with the blue sky above them and the green earth 
round about and the indomitable sea, with work 
to do and love to give and take. Life, the great 



THE CHILDHOOD OF RELIGION 321 

deep-bosomed mother, is justified of her children 
in whatever guise they come. Not alone be- 
cause they tend to further possibilities of use 
and joy, but because at every stage in the long 
march they drain their cup and laugh their 
laugh and sing their marching song. Even in 
the most intellectual things, life does not wait 
for the last full expression to be something 
worth living. . . . That is a great phrase in 
Hebrews where, speaking of the saints and he- 
roes of the past, it says, ' God having provided 
some better thing for us, that they without us 
might not be made perfect.' As truthfully it 
might be written, ^God having provided some 
good thing for them, that our perfection might 
not be their sole excilse for being.' '' Address 
on ^^ Life's Constant Good," by J. W. Chad- 
wick. 

This writer beautifully says that deep down 
in the religions of the past, amid much that is 
discouraging and repellent, ^^ there was the awe- 
struck wonder in the presence of the main facts 
of human life, there was devotion to ideal ex- 
cellence, there was the yearning soul singing its 
universal song,— 

"Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee !" 

In the apparently irrational views of the 
world and in the conceptions of man and nature 
that seem strange to us there is an element of 
reality, sincerity and pure humanity, and under- 



322 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

neath the ^^wild and whirling thoughts sound 
and practical ideals. ' ' The real God has always 
been the ideal best, and the curious doctrines 
which are impossible to the present *^were 
merely men's clumsy, stammering way of saying 
something sweet and good.'' 

To be sure, religion has its night side, and 
confusion of thought and baseless terrors have 
been the cause of innumerable tragedies and 
countless miseries. In its beginnings religion 
is often associated with taboo and magic. 
These superstitions, as Professor Toy tells us, 
have *'a common basis in the conception of an 
occult force (which may conveniently be called 
mana) resident in all things, but they contem- 
plate different sides of this force, and their 
social developments are very different. ' ' Taboo 
is concerned with its injurious manifestations 
and the way to avoid them, while magic seeks to 
find out its law and to control it. Magic is thus 
a way of directing or coercing an occult force for 
human benefit, and as such ^^has fostered belief 
in a false science of sequences and thus helped to 
introduce confusion into thought and the con- 
duct of life." Eeligion seeks to establish 
friendly relations with the gods and to co-oper- 
ate with them, and its *^aim has been, and is, to 
banish magic from the world." 

Because of the repulsive and injurious super- 
stitions with which it was naturally long con- 
fused and because its beginnings were neces- 



THE CHILDHOOD OF RELIGION 323 

sarily humble and unrefined, some have made 
the mistake of regarding religion as an incident 
of an immature culture to be discarded in more 
civilized times. To such minds every high and 
fine thing in the world is a case of *^ nothing 
but'' its unlovely and scarcely recognizable be- 
ginnings. But a more rational way of thinking, 
it would seem, is to interpret processes by their 
outcome and things that grow by what they 
grow into rather than by what they start from. 
The central fact of religious experience being 
communion and union with the deity and the 
evolution of religion being the evolution of 
man's sense of the divine, we understand it 
most clearly when we study its civilized forms. 
Among savages it is, of course, savage, among 
barbarians it is barbarous, — witness shamanism, 
the cult of Dionysus among the Greeks, and 
prophecy in Israel in Saul's time, as described in 
I Samuel, Chapters X and XIX. Through the 
centuries the sense of God's presence grew into 
higher and purer forms, and at last we have the 
23rd and 139th psalms and Wordsworth's po- 
etry. The patriarch Jacob, when he awakened 
from the sleep in which he dreamed of a ladder 
reaching from earth to heaven with angels as- 
cending and descending thereon, thought that he 
had discovered the gate of heaven, the place 
where he might hope in the future to find God. 
He realized the unsuspected sacredness of the 
spot and exclaimed, ** Surely the Lord is in this 



324 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

place; and I knew it not.'' But religious 
thought and feeling grew, and perhaps a thou- 
sand years later one of his descendants was able 
to say of the universe what he thought was true 
only of his solitary refuge for a night. Jacob 
thought as a child, he felt and spoke as a child 
because he was a child, but his feeling and his 
conceptions were capable of development into 
that higher sense of communion which is ex- 
pressed for humanity in the magnificent 
words : — 

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? 

Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? 

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: 

If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. 

If I take the wings of the morning, 

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; 

Even there shall thy hand lead me, 

And thy right hand shall hold me. 

If I say, Surely the darkness shall overwhelm me, 

And the light about me shall be night; 

Even the darkness hideth not from thee, 

But the night shineth as the day. 

The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. 

How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, God I 

How great is the sum of them ! 

If I should count them, they are more in number than the 

sand: 
When I awake, I am still with thee. 

Eeaders of books of travel, or of the treatises 
of such men as Tylor and Spencer, do not 
usually see, beneath the strange and partly re- 



THE CHILDHOOD OF RELIGION 325 

pulsive rites, customs and beliefs of savages, the 
truth and beauty which are really there. For 
clear perception, profound insight, sympathy 
and diligent study are needed. When, for in- 
stance, we read such a report of the spiritual 
life of an uncivilized people as that given by 
Walter McClintock in ^^The Old North Trail," 
we realize how impossible it is for any one to 
understand that life who depends for his infor- 
mation upon travelers, hunters and traders who 
despise as worthless what they see but do not 
really comprehend. In this account of the 
*^Life, Legends and Religion of the Blackfeet 
Indians," it is made perfectly clear that ^Hhe 
untutored savage" has not wholly missed the 
mark. In the Sun-dance Ceremonial, e. g., the 
head chief utters the following prayer : 

^* Great Sun Power! I am praying for my 
people that they may be happy in the summer 
and that they may live through the cold of win- 
ter. Many are sick and in want. Pity them 
and let them survive. Grant that they may live 
long and have abundance. May we go through 
these ceremonies correctly, as you taught our 
forefathers to do in the days that are past. If 
we make mistakes pity us. Help us. Mother 
Earth! for we depend upon your goodness. 
Let there be rain to water the prairies, that the 
grass may grow long and the berries be abun- 
dant. Morning Star! when you look down 
upon us, give us peace and refreshing sleep. 



326 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

Great Spirit! bless our children, friends, and 
visitors through a happy life. May our trails 
lie straight and level before us. Let us live to 
be old. We are all your children and ask these 
things with good hearts. '^ 

Here, as always, if we know how to look for 
it and to recognize it when we see it, we discover 
in ^Hhe childhood of religion'^ the humble but 
beautiful beginnings of pure and undefiled re- 
ligion. 

Through the studies of such intelligent and 
sympathetic observers we are gaining a new in- 
sight into and a better appreciation of the spir- 
itual life of primitive people. Those who are 
striving to understand the evolution of the re- 
ligious life of our race must be deeply grateful 
for such service as that which has been ren- 
dered by Miss Alice C. Fletcher who, in the 
Twenty-second Annual Eeport of the Bureau of 
American Ethnology, has given an account of 
* * The Hako : A Pawnee CeremoniaL ' ' The rec- 
ord was taken from the lips of an old Pawnee 
who gave Miss Fletcher the ritual songs, the 
words and the music, and also interpreted them. 
A summary of Miss Fletcher's report, together 
with a poetization of the Hako, entitled *^The 
Mystery of Life,'' has been made by Prof. H. B. 
Alexander of the University of Nebraska. 
(Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co., 
1913.) 



THE CHILDHOOD OF RELIGION 327 

What these scholarly writers make clear is the 
deep meaning and great beauty of this cere- 
monial, which symbolizes the relation between 
the divine and human by the relation of a father 
to his children by adoption and his children by 
birth. They find striking analogies to the 
Eleusinian Mysteries of the Greeks, and an ex- 
pression of fine and noble feelings which will 
seem incredible to those who have seen only the 
externals of Indian life. Professor Alexander 
considers it ^^the most complete and perfect ex- 
ample of a type of religious rite world-wide in 
its development. The essentials of the rite are 
a mystic representation of the union of Father 
Heaven and Mother Earth and the resultant 
birth of a Spirit of Life, primarily a Vege- 
tation Spirit, vegetation being the basis of ani- 
mal life. . . . The Ceremony of the Hako is 
throughout symbolic, but the symbolism em- 
ployed is so elemental that it must seem the very 
portrait of truth as it appears to the mind un- 
taught in science. Further, it is a symbolism 
that is not merely Pawnee, not merely Ameri- 
can Indian, but in its main features it is world- 
wide. Hardly a hint is required to make it in- 
telligible to any human being who has breathed 
the free air of the open country, who has looked 
up to the blue sky, to sun and moon and stars 
and moving clouds, who has looked about him 
at the green earth and growing fields. Indeed, 



328 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

we may fairly say that the Pawnee conception 
of the frame and governance of the world is 
nearer to the ordinary thinking of even edu- 
cated men than is the conception which the sci- 
ence of astronomy presents. For however hon- 
estly we may believe astronomical doctrines, 
they are still doctrines that must be intel- 
lectually mastered and held; they are not in- 
stinctive in human experience. Our senses tell 
us each day that the blue heavens are above and 
the green earth below and that the sun and stars 
in their daily courses journey through the arc 
of the skies. And our senses are powerfully 
fortified in their interpretation by language and 
literature — the props and stays of our ideas — 
in which are embalmed the conceptions of sense 
as they have come to expression throughout the 
course of history.'^ 

There are many passages in the ceremonial 
strikingly like sentences from noble Hebrew 
psalms. Much of the Pawnee symbolism lends 
itself beautifully to Christian meanings, but the 
writer, while noting this, is careful to say that 
^^It is not to be understood that we credit the 
Pawnee with this spiritual meaning. We can- 
not even credit him with a pure and exalted re- 
ligion, for certain of his rites were of the darkest 
heathendom. But in this ceremony of the Hako, 
singularly pure and exalted, we do find so much 
that is common to the best in all religion that it 
cannot but bring the Indian closer to the White, 



THE CHILDHOOD OF RELIGION 329 

if once we permit it to command our sympa- 
thies/' 

In one part of the ritual, the leader imitates 
the building by a bird of its nest. To Miss 
Fletcher it was explained that when doing this, 
^^we are thinking of Tirawa making the world 
for the people to live in. If you go on a high 
hill and look around, you will see the sky touch- 
ing the earth on every side, and within this en- 
closure the people live. So the circles we have 
made are not only nests, but they also represent 
the circle Tirawa-atius has made for the dwell- 
ing place of all the people." The child's feet 
are then placed within the circle. The little 
one represents the new generation, and the 
putting of its feet in the circle means the giv- 
ing of new life. Then come the songs as fol- 
lows: 

^^Hearken! List! We are calling you. Come! Chil- 
dren, come! 

Come ! We're ready and waiting, your Father's "waiting. 
Come! Children, come! 

Hear us calling, calling you ! Children, come ! 

Children come! Come hither! 

Harken! List as we call you, call to the Children to 
come. ... 

''Look, where they come, see them, see them, young ones 
and old ones! 

Look! Here they come, this way, that way flocking to- 
gether. 

Hither they come, shouting like eagles, 

Shouting come. 



330 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

Joyous, happy, gladly come they, gaily coming, coming 

hither. 
See where they come, flocking like birds, shouting like 
eagles 
As they come to the Fathers." 

The following is from the Blessing of the Child: 

"Breathe on him! 
Breathe on him! 

Life thou alone canst give to him. 
Long life, we pray. Oh Father, give unto him !" 

In another part of the ritual occurs this song: 

"I know not if the voice of man can reach to the sky ; 
I know not if the mighty one will hear as I pray; 
I know not if the gifts I ask will all granted be; 
I know not if the word of old we truly can hear; 
I know not what will come to pass in our future days; 
I hope that only good will come, my children, to you." 

"I now know that the voice of man can reach to the sky; 
I now know that the mighty one has heard as I prayed ; 
I now know that the gifts I ask have all granted been; 
I now know that the word of old we truly have heard ; 
I now know that Tirawa barkens unto man's prayer; 
I know that only good has come, my children, to you." 
"Father, unto thee we cry! 

Father thou of gods and men; 

Father thou of all we hear; 

Father thou of all we see. 

Father, unto thee we cry." 

Further light is shed upon the inner meaning 
of this ceremonial by Tahirussawichi who, after 
repeating to Miss Fletcher the Blessing of the 
Child, said: 



THE CHILDHOOD OF EELIGION 331 

*^When I sing this song I pray to Tirawa to 
come down and touch with his breath the symbol 
of his face and all the other symbols on the little 
child. I pray with all my spirit that Tirawa- 
atius will let the child grow up and become 
strong and find favor in its life. 

*'This is a very solemn act, because we believe 
that Tirawa-atius, although not seen by us, 
sends down his breath as we pray, calling on him 
to come. 

^^As I sing this song with you I cannot help 
shedding tears. I have never sung it before 
except as I stood looking at the little child and 
praying for it in my heart. There is no little 
child here, but you are here writing all these 
things down that they may not be lost and that 
our children may know what their fathers be- 
lieved and practised in this ceremony. So, as I 
sing, I am calling to Tirawa-atius to send down 
his breath upon you, to give you strength and 
long life. I am praying for you with all my 
spirit.'^ Alexander. Op. cit. 47. 

As we look at this spiritual interior, we 
realize that religion at this immature stage of 
development is not without nobility and beauty. 
There was some truth even in the animistic be- 
ginnings of religion. Primitive man was not 
wholly wrong in his feeling that something akin 
to his own life was in the world around him. 
This intuition was the spiritual foundation of 
much that is high and beautiful in the life of 



332 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

to-day. It is true, he fell into fantastic and 
pernicious errors, he drew wrong inferences 
from what he vaguely felt, he mixed his reli- 
gion with fetichism and magic; nevertheless 
even his fears were evidence of his capacity for 
recognizing and coming into spiritual relations 
with higher powers. He had entered upon the 
path that leads to the knowledge of a great 
^^Life, both beyond us and within us, real, 
mighty, righteous, friendly, loving, out of which 
we come, in which we may rest, in whose com- 
panionship we need never be lonely, in the sight 
of whom we need never have a fear. ^ ' The line 
of development has not, of course, been straight. 
It almost never is. Miss Kingsley, in her de- 
lightful ^^West African Studies, ^^ says: ^* Al- 
though a Darwinian to the core, I doubt if 
evolution in a neat and tidy perpendicular line, 
with Fetich at the bottom and Christianity at the 
top, represents the true state of things.^' The 
matter is not so simple, for life runs into blind 
alleys and there are many cases of arrested de- 
velopment and of degeneration. Still, she sees 
that ^ ^ the shy yearnings of the savage, unfold- 
ing thought by thought, ' ' eventually become part 
of the poetry of Goethe and the philosophy of 
Spinoza. 

The truth which the savage felt, but about 
which he could not be clear, is the same truth 
that in higher and purer form has attained to 



THE CHILDHOOD OP RELIGION 333 

expression in much of the poetry in which we 
find inspiration and delight, as, for example, in 
the familiar lines, — 

"God of the granite and the rose, 
Soul of the sparrow and the bee, 
The mighty tide of being flows 
Through countless channels, Lord, from thee. 
It leaps to life in grass and flowers, 
Through every grade of being runs, 
Till from Creation's radiant towers 
Its glory flames in stars and suns." 

Elizabeth Doten. 

It is, therefore, clear that when we see the 
religious life of our race in perspective, we are 
justified in saying that amidst all the perver- 
sions and distortions, the agonizing fear, the 
sacrifices of life and honor, the persecutions and 
religious wars, there has been a striving for a 
better and a higher, for a fellowship with the di- 
vine. Miss Kingsley perceived the motive and 
spring of the whole movement when she de- 
clared that ^^The final object of all human desire 
is a knowledge of the nature of Grod.'^ Op. cit. 
P. 95. The correlative of this truth is well 
stated by Professor Bousset when he says that 
man strives because God leads, and that the ulti- 
mate explanation of the religious life is the fact 
that God ** draws men individually from error to 
truth, from imperfection to perfection, from 
egoism to fraternity, from the sensual to the 



334 THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 

moral, from the natural to the spiritual, and at- 
tracts them to himself.'^ *^What is Religion,'^ 
P. 28. 

There are indications that our spiritual life 
will be greatly enriched when to our science, 
and our reverence for moral and personal 
ideals, we add a sense of the world's life. We 
are not the better or more efficient in our purely 
intellectual life for the belief that the earth is 
but a dead cinder. Consider the instructive 
case of Q. T. Fechner, one of the most remark- 
able men in the history of science, acknowledged 
as a master by such scholars as Preyer, Wundt, 
Paulsen and Lasswitz. (See the chapter on 
Fechner in ^^A Pluralistic Universe, '' by Wil- 
liam James.) Fechner 's mind was ^^one of 
those multitudinously organized cross-roads of 
truth which are occupied only at rare intervals 
by children of men, and from which nothing is 
either too far or too near to be seen in due 
perspective. '' He passionately believed that 
nature is no barren wilderness. This belief did 
not interfere with his marvellous scientific work, 
but it did give him what he called ^ ' the daylight 
view'' of the world. His vision is of extreme 
beauty. The form in which he reports it is new, 
for the vision is fresh. If we cannot see it, if 
it seems too good and too beautiful to be true, 
this may be either because our own vision is 
defective or because we have to deal with pure 
fancy. In the light of the fact that religion is 



THE CHILDHOOD OF RELIGION 335 

nearly, if not quite, universal, and that it has 
always felt or perceived the kinship of man's 
life with the life of the world, and that the poets 
and prophets of the race, from the writer of the 
104th psalm to Tagore, render the same report, 
it does not seem irrational to believe that what 
they say they see is really there. 

Moreover, this is not merely a matter of 
poetry, or of a new joy in nature. An accept- 
ance of this view is probably necessary to pro- 
duce a change in our attitude toward the earth 
which must come if we are to use it in the best 
way and to live wisely and happily together. 
Thus, in a sober, earnest book, written by L. H. 
Bailey to bring about a radical alteration in our 
thought and feeling concerning the world in 
which we live, and which is entitled ' ' The Holy 
Earth," there are chapters as follows: 

"The earth is good.'' 

"It is kindly." 

"It is holy." 

"The spiritual contact with nature." 

"The keeping of the beautiful earth." 

The author writes because he wishes us to find 
*^a vast joy in the fellowship of nature, some- 
thing like the joy of Pan," and also because he 
is convinced that a religious view of our relation 
to the earth, to other living things and to those 
who are yet to be born, is a necessary condition 
of a just, harmonious and happy social life. 
This is very curious and unexpected testimony. 



336 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

What we are told is that the religious view of 
the world is not merely an illusion of primitive 
minds or a fancy of cultivated poets, but that 
there is a truth in it which is a necessity of civ- 
ilized social life. In its long history, our race 
has fallen into many errors, hat in its main 
course what has led it has been no ignis fatuus, 
but the true light which was from the beginning, 
which lighteth every man, which was with God 
and was God. A comparative study of the 
great religions of the world, in their essentials 
and development, only makes clear the truth 
which has been divined by men of insight and 
which has found expression in religious poetry, 
as, for example, in the following lines by Samuel 
Longfellow : 

Light of ages and of nations ! 

Every race, and every time, 
Has received thine inspirations, 

Glimpses of thy truth sublime. 
Always spirits in rapt vision 

Passed the heavenly veil within, 
Always hearts bowed in contrition 

Found salvation from their sin. 

Reason's noble aspiration 

Truth in growing clearness saw; 
Conscience spoke its condemnation, 

Or proclaimed the Eternal law. 
While thine inward revelations 

Told thy saints their prayers were heard, 
Prophets to the guilty nations 

Spoke thine everlasting word. 



THE CHILDHOOD OF EELiaiON 337 

Lord, that word abideth ever; 

Revelation is not sealed; 
Answering now to our endeavor, 

Truth and Right are still revealed. 
That which came to ancient sages, 

Greek, Barbarian, Roman, Jew, 
Written in the soul^s deep pages, 

Shines to-day, forever new I 

The beginnings of man's spiritual life were 
indeed humble. Eeligion has had its childhood, 
but from the first it felt the truth which we more 
clearly see. The history of religion may be said 
to be the story of the evolution of man's sense 
of God's presence. It can hardly be sum- 
marized better than in the following words by 
Eev. Charles F. Dole: 

^^This presence appears at first to the child 
or the savage as a dim and dark realm, full of 
fears, tenanted with ghosts and monsters and 
unknown powers of darkness. But even to the 
early man it is also a realm out of which the 
sun shines and the harvests come, and the 
strange boon of life and the laughter in chil- 
dren's eyes. There is not fear only, but also a 
sense of companionship in the mysterious 
groves and the hill-tops where the sacred 
shrines were set up. But by and by, as the child 
becomes a man, and the man becomes human- 
ized, there grows to be a joy in the desert places, 
in the lonely hills and forests, in the vast spaces 
of the star-lit heavens; fear passes away; the 
mystery of darkness changes to a mystery of 



338 THE SYMPATHY OF EELIGIONS 

power and light and beauty ; the man belongs to 
the mighty universe as a child of its Life ; its 
noblest society here opens up into reaches of 
possibility beyond his present sight; its laws 
become his normal conditions of health and wel- 
fare; its duties of obedience, truth, justice, 
honor, loyalty, devotion become his chosen de- 
light. ' ' ^ ^ The Coming Eeligion, ' ' P. 41. 

This is what we see when from the vantage 
ground of the present we look backward to the 
childhood of religion and the beginnings of the 
spiritual life. Those beginnings were very 
humble and they are very far away, but from 
them the great climb has gone on until at last a 
being appears who wants to know all, who has a 
quenchless thirst for perfection, who aspires to 
have dominion over the earth, who has reached 
the conception of God as light and love, and who 
dares to believe that he is God^s child. This 
grand and beautiful conception he holds with in- 
creasing clearness and consciousness of its sig- 
nificance, but he has felt its truth ever since he 
was human. To the men of to-day the religious 
thought of the ages has come full circle. From 
the unity of savage apprehensions of truth, 
through the centuries in which countless systems 
have had their day, we have at length come, and 
we see the long lines converging to a new unity 
of civilized and truly humanized thought on the 
heights. 

To our exultant gladness in being the in- 



THE CHILDHOOD OF RELIGION 339 

heritors of the result of the ages of thought and 
aspiration 

"Since the first man stood GKxi-conquered with his faec to 
heaven upturned/' 

and our joy in our vision of the coming unity 
we can but add our aspiration for its com- 
pletion : 

"We would be one in hatred of all wrong, 
One in our love of all things sweet and fair, 
One with the joy that breaketh into song 

One with the grief that trembles into prayer, 
One in the power that makes thy children free 
To follow truth, and thus to follow thee.'^ 



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